Red Ink / Red Tape

sourceforge.com

tigris.org

These are places where you can download IDE's, packages of code that enhance Eclipse. What's Eclipse? Eclipse is a free code editor (think Word for programming). It's useful because, much like word, the editor highlights mistakes formats things and makes life easier in general.

I have spent the entire night hunting down the plugin for ActionScript. I eventually found it here:

http://www.fdt.powerflasher.com/developer-tools/fdt-3/download/

But this was after many brick walls and misleading blog posts. What I think is going on is that Adobe, the creators of Flash, Photoshop, Dreamweaver etc. want people to pay a few hundred dollars for THEIR plugin for Eclipse, called "Flex." The majority of developers do, so the subculture/open source culture for this project is dying out. Sure, it's only a few hundred dollars and is probably better than anything I'd find... but I've read all over the place that paying for ECLIPSE is a sin and there are ways around it.

I don't have the cash, but I also don't have much more time to mess around. I should be further along schedule than I am.

These tools shouldn't be so difficult to discover.

Or maybe they should.

Either way I'm probably going to shell out for this thing and eat less for awhile. What if I just_couldn't_afford it? Art wouldn't happen. The void between those who "can" and those who "can't" is only going to broaden as what we can do... develops.

I feel like I trying to catch up to a bullet train on a rusty tricycle.