Flex development on the cheap (free)

When introducing Flex in my organization there was a bit of pushback on the Flex Builder licenses. Being the Java shop the we are, free is just the way it works. We’re so used to using free tools like Eclipse that we question paying for anything. This reminded me of when I was trying to learn ActionScript way back and had to have a copy of Flash to work through things.

So here you are, don’t want to buy Flex Builder but you do want to learn flex. Sure there is a 30day trial but what will you do after that?

There are a few tools available that allow you to code in ActionScript / Flex for free. One of the popular ones is FlashDevelop is a free IDE for developing apps for the Flash Platform. FlashDevelop is a basic IDE that provides code insight, project management, and integrated compilation. There are a few steps to install,such as pointing to the Flex3 SDK and the location of your Flash Player, but that’s it.

Create a new project, write some code and you’re good to go. Flex development with no strings attached.

Check out FlashDevelop, it’s a great tool for Flex development.