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Asked: 2026-05-23T05:10:16+00:00

I’m working on a guitar tutorial website where users can select parts of a

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I’m working on a guitar tutorial website where users can select parts of a song, then write an explanation of how to do that guitar technique. The explanation will pop up, like a youtube style annotation whenever someone plays that song. It’s like the youtube video annotations, except exclusive to guitar lessons:

When someone plays a song, the annotations get displayed in real time.

-There will be 3 sql databases: user information (ex. email, password, etc…), song meta information (ex. song name, length of song, etc…), annotation information and content (ex. annotation start and end time (to queue when the analysis/annotation should be displayed), etc…). The flash gui will interact with all databases.

-The site will be done in php.

There’s a lot of options out there (Adobe flash CS5, flex, flash builder), what are the differences between the three?

Can you recommend just one based on the specs? I don’t want to throw down US$799 for flash builder premium 4.5 for php but also don’t want to purchase flex builder 3.0 US$99 if it would take me a lot longer to do.

Thanks

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    What not

    That sounds like a serious application, so I would discard Flash CS5 altogether: you don’t get all the programming productivity stuff (like code completion) and it’s harder to bring good structure in your code. You can use Flash CS5 for animations, banners, simple applets and the like, but it’s not a good choice for a bigger application.

    Free

    You could do it for free since the Flex SDK is open-source and the mxmlc compiler is free to use (you can use mxmlc to compile pure actionscript code too). There are two options here:

    • simple text editors (with plugins for AS and Flex) like Vim or TextMate. Compile on the command line or with ANT.
    • FlashDevelop is a free IDE (like FlashBuilder) that can do pretty much everything FlashBuilder can. You don’t get a design mode though (I for one, do not consider that a downside)

    Not free

    There’s FlashBuilder, FDT and IntelliJ Idea (and probably some others), which are all pretty much equally expensive. If you will be doing more Flex or AS projects it’s definitely worth the expense, but for just one project you might reconsider. As for the php integration: it will speed up development time, but if it’s just for one project, I really don’t think it’s worth it, considering you’ll probably have to do some initial research on how to get those integration features to work. They only pay off if you use them many times.

    There’s also the option of FlashBuilder 3. It’s slower than the later versions and has less coding assistance, but you can et it to work with the Flex 4.5 SDK if you want to, so that’s not a dealbreaker.

    Who’s it for

    Your choice may also depend on the developers that will be doing the work. If you have a developer who is proficient with Flash CS5 but doesn’t know the first thing about FlashBuilder or command line compiling, then by all means go for Flash CS5.

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