TextPad and Flex
If you don’t have the latest and greatest development machine like me you may be interested in writing code in an application that doesn’t consume copious amounts of memory and resources…
I have always been a fan of TextPad and I was delighted to find out that Adobe has provided a syntax file for use with it. If you are not familiar with TextPad, think of it like Windows NotePad for developers. It has just enough options to keep you happy while not overloading you with WYSIWYG editors.
Follow the instructions here to download and install the MXML syntax file.
After that, go here to obtain the ActionScript syntax file and configure it in the same manner for *.as files.
Next, you can configure TextPad to launch the mxmlc compiler.
- From the Configure Menu choose Preferences.
- Select Tools and click Add.
- Navigate to your mxmlc file under FlexSDK/bin and select OK.
- Click Apply and expand Tools and select Mxmlc.
- From this menu you can add parameters to the command. Be sure to read up on all the great options available such as incremental and optimize.
- When you are finished, click OK to close the Preferences panel.
- Select your main application file and from the Tools menu choose External Tools->Mxmlc. The shortcut to your tool will be Ctrl+[NUM] displayed to the right of the tool in the menu. The output from the command will appear in the lower window (TextPad 5) or a separate document (TextPad 4).
The only downside to mxmlc, even on a fast machine, is load time. If you are constantly making quick changes and compiles you may want to look into the flex compiler shell at Adobe Labs. Keep it open in a separate command window and just alt-tab between TextPad and the compiler shell.