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Asked: 2026-05-11T07:47:28+00:00

I’ve just switched from Windows to Mac and need to find a few tools

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I’ve just switched from Windows to Mac and need to find a few tools to replace those that were Windows-only. I’m most familiar with FlashDevelop, which I’ve used for years, but it is Windows only. SEPY seems to have been abandoned, FlashIDE’s editor seems weak, and I don’t want to purchase FDT or FlexBuilder right now.

I would like an editor that is as good as FlashDevelop at auto-completion and syntax highlight for AS3 and MXML, is highly customizable, and can thus be configured to call external scripts and applications, such as ant, javac, mxmlc, and python with a custom button or hotkey. Also, it would be great if it is lightweight and isn’t too pushy about using it’s own project folder/management like Eclipse/FlexBuilder/FDT. I often only need to build a single AS3 file or MXML file and don’t like the project setup time or having my own folders littered with project metadata files.

Can you recommend a couple of really good AS3 and MXML editors for Mac?

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  1. Textmate is your guy. Super lightweight, infinitely customizable with loads of lovely plug-ins and ‘bundles’ (syntax, auto-complete, snippets, macros, commands). There’s an AS3 bundle as well that adds ant, mxmlc, etc. It’s also really fun to make custom color-highlighting for. It’s not for everyone–it’s definitely very lightweight (don’t expect an IDE), but if you work with it for awhile, you’ll see why it’s one of mac-user’s favorites.

    http://macromates.com/

    Edit:

    Coda is a sexy little app by Panic (makers of Transmit FTP, the de-facto ftp program for Mac) that wraps css editors, text editors, a terminal window, FTP, and more into one tab-paneled application. I personally found it to be too stripped down in each department, but it does make a great application overall if it suits your needs. I know a few programmers and project managers who use it and love it.

    http://www.panic.com/coda/

    Also, Xcode (the free Mac development IDE) can be very nicely configured to work with AS3. I’ve been developing with it in Objective-C recently and the code-completion and hinting is brilliant. If you can get something like the following rocking with AS3, it could be pretty badass.

    http://blog.joshbuhler.com/xcodeflex/

    and

    http://opencode.forabettertoday.org/?p=3

    Other than that, your options are pretty limited until FlashDevelop comes to Mac. I know that using Flash’s editor sure as heck isn’t an option! They might as well not include it in the next Flash! 😉

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