Flash Builder Complaints

[peewee_RotA]

You don't load an existing project, you import it. This is not clearly explained in their help documentation.

A Workspace is not what it means in MSV versions, and there is not really a strong concept of solution... so you have to manually "import" all of the projects that are used as resources/dependencies.

The "debug" and "flash" (development) screens are separate views that must be changed by clicking on non-descriptive buttons on the top.


Now this is only after about 30 minutes of using the program. I'm certain I'll find plenty more silly things. But my real complaint is this. If you're going to create an IDE that blurs the meanings of established terminology used by other IDEs... then include an giant and immediately accessible "FAQ" or "idiots guide" to explain the differences.

 

[[BTF]Defiant!]

Flash Builder for Action Script (not Flex):
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/flashbuilder/using/index.html

I know this doesn't really answer your compliant..

[peewee_RotA]

Oh I went to those. The getting started article that covers "import" only mentioned the word "existing" a couple of steps into a procedure of "importing a folder." The comment was vague and misleading, but the words "existing" and "project" were close to each other and it virtually confirmed my thoughts on what my guess to that functionality should have been. 

[peewee_RotA]

Hidden deep within the bowels of a project's properties lie a few options for actions that are almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea custom build steps (such as copying folders to the output directory). These actions do not get triggered by building a project. These actions do not get triggered when you debug. These actions do not get triggered by the auto-compile done while saving.

These actions are triggered by... wait for it... wait for it... the clean project button.   

[peewee_RotA]

More crap from flashbuilder:

The print button is right next to the save button... because you never know when punchcards will come back into style.

The terms: xml comment, block comments, header comments, and essentially anything else that is used to describe function header comments that IDEs use to generate function description tooltips are never equated to adobe's terminology. They call them "ASDOCs." I figured that was just a synonym for proctologist, but what do I know?

 

[peewee_RotA]

This is quite possibly the worst one of all, because it's a major system flaw.

Every so often, basic actions can cause the Clean operation to not work correctly (leave old binaries) which will then cause the build operation to fail. Neither of these problems report any errors in any way shape or form. Additionally, the debugger does not detect that the new code (which wasn't built) doesn't match the current executing code so it steps through showing the new code based on line number, but still executes what's in the binary.

In my case I changed a value of a Datetime formatter property. I spent about an hour researching to find out why that property isn't changing (possible race condition because of an override value that can be used during events that get thrown). After getting to the end of this path. Turns out that closing flash builder (out of desparation) caused the next debug action to trigger a build that didn't fail this time and therefore the new code magically works.

 


Adobe sucks.

[peewee_RotA]

Tried out Flash Develop for the weekend. (I wanted to see what would develop)


It was a thousand times better. The debugger, specifically the watch pane, didn't work very well. But everything else about it is better. It's significantly more stable too!

[peewee_RotA]

This has happened to me enough times to make me finally start complaining publicly. If you double-click on a search result in order to show the containing line, it will close the last window opened using the same method.

 

[peewee_RotA]

This is a general AS3/Flex complaint but I'm still posting it here.


Sprites can act as containers of other visual elements. To tell if a sprite contains a visual element, you typically call sprite.contains(obj)

However, as it turns out sprite.contains() can return true for grand children and other relatives. Although it stops short at second cousins.   

[peewee_RotA]

So there is some sort of compiler problem when you use two classes with the same name. Even if you specify the namespace inline, instead of using import statements.

For example, flash.globalization.DateTimeFormatter and spark.formatters.DateTimeFormatter cannot be used in the same file. The syntax checker figures it out right, but the compiler fails to recognize one of them. I'm guessing it's a flex issue, not flash builder specific, but it's still insane.

I noticed this problem about a month ago when I had a custom class named the same as one of the system classes. I figured I'd wait to post until I found an instance where both classes were made by adobe.