| | Sat Jul 07, 2007 4:21 pm | | | | Comments: 0 Views: 74 |
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FAME is a development environment for Adobe's ActionScript 2.0. It's open source, meaning it's free to use. The environment's compiler is MTASC (Motion Twin ActionScript Compiler) which is also open source and has been shown to be significantly more efficient than Adobe's. The only real reason to use MTASC is because it is supposed to make writing code and organizing projects easier.
I'll admit that it's also nice to click "save" and have the actionscript file compile automatically into a predetermined directory, but I'm hesitant to invest time in learning this environment when I'm not exactly certain what the benefits are. Here's a rundown of what I've discovered about FAME and why it's a good/bad production environment for actionscript aside from the fact that it is open source.
*Pros*
-Removes redundant steps in work flow over both standard text editors and macromedia's actionscript solutions
-significantly faster compile times: SWFs that take 30 seconds to compile in Flash take one or two seconds to compile in MTASC.
-Class based programming should help organize projects and make it easier to reuse code.
-Eclipse with ASDT tells you where code problems are in the document window while you type.
-There are over 800 different plugins for eclipse, the primary editor, which can be used to develop in basically every language in existence using these plugins:
http://www.eclipse-plugins.info/eclipse/index.jsp
-Will provide good blog material for a little known and talked about portion of the OS community.
*Cons*
-It looks like a tough environment for macs to use. See: http://blog.mandalatv.net/?p=86
Fortunately I don't use a mac.
-for MTASC to work properly you have to configure the settings correctly in the ASDT preferences.
-MTASC will not compile FLA. MTASC only compiles SWF files.
-There are some minor differences between Adobe's MM compiler and MTASC that cause code differences. Considering I don't know much of anything about actionscipt yet this probably isn't going to be much of an issue. It will and has caused problems finding good documentation and example code.
-I'll be learning how to make a basic program from scratch using a totally foreign environment that currently makes no sense to me at all.
That's it for the pro's and cons today. I'm sure I'll come up with a lot more cons and the project moves forward.
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