M Studio Labs

Ant is a great little build tool which allows you to automate all sorts of things like compiling code, moving/copying files, creating .zip archives and using FTP to upload. The latest version of FDT has a library of Ant commands specific to Flash. There are a bunch of articles listed below which explain some of the other features, but I’m going to focus on FTP here.

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Eclipse is great, but sometimes the option menus are a little overwhelming. Every time I install a fresh copy of Eclipse, I pull my hair out looking for a handful of preferences. Here they are — hopefully someone will find this useful:

Change the editor font:
Preferences > General > Appearance > Colors and Fonts > Basic > Text Font

These are great fonts, btw: “proggy_fonts”

Remove the annoying vertical line in the editor window (print margin):
Preferences > General>Editors > Text Editors: “Print Margin”

Remove the line highlight in the main editor:
Preferences > General>Editors > Text Editors : “Highlight Current Line”

I like to be able to run the the project I’m working on by hitting a key-command, so I can make a tweak and then quickly re-compile. From my Flash IDE days, I’m partial to Ctrl-Enter.

This is one of the more useful features in Eclipse and every time I re-install or set up a new machine, I forget how to enable it.. so hopefully this will help others as well as my future self the next time I install Eclipse:
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