JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA Blog

At JetBrains we not only bring you new powerful features that make your life better, but also take care to polish the good old stuff to perfection. Let’s take a look at the Move refactoring for ActionScript classes, Flex components and all other types of top-level declarations (namespaces, functions, variables and constants), that has just got a little smarter. By the way, this refactoring also works for inner declarations (also known as helpers or file-local declarations), defined in ActionScript file out of the package statement.

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Hello guys! Just recently we’ve published an update to our Flash/Flex Profiler plugin that gives you a powerful and easy to use toolset for profiling of Flash-based applications in IntelliJ IDEA.

Let us give you a brief overview of what you can do with it.

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Do you know how to navigate from a class to its test and back again or how to create a FlexUnit test quickly with IntelliJ IDEA 11? Let me tell you.

First of all make sure that flexunit.swc is within your module dependencies:

and just press Ctrl+Shift+T (Cmd+Shift+T on Mac) or select Navigate | Test from main menu:

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I’d like to highlight few useful features in ActionScript/Flex debugger, some of which are new in IntelliJ IDEA 11.

Better members presentation in Variables view (informative icons, sorting) with ability to jump to source:

Convenient collections view (size, Vector status, collection elements):

Mark any object instance and this instance will be highlighted in all views if met again until the end of the debug session:

[SWF] and [UnloadSWF] messages are now filtered out by default. Toggle respective button in Debug tool window to switch the filter off:

Debug with pleasure!

Since IntelliJ IDEA 11 the Mark Object action, which was previously available in JVM-based debuggers only, is also supported in JavaScript debuggers for Firefox and Chrome browsers. To mark an object press F11 on the corresponding node in any debugger tree and specify the label:

After that the labeled object will be marked accordingly in all debugger views:

By the way this feature also works in Flex debugger starting from IntelliJ IDEA 10.5.

As you may know, IntelliJ IDEA has high-class support for creating Flash, Flex and AIR applications as well as HTML5 interactive content. As more and more IntelliJ IDEA users adopted these languages, we realized that they deserved a dedicated product that would meet their specific needs and make them even more productive. So today we’re very excited to introduce Astella — our brand new IDE for Sprite masters, frameRate hunters and Canvas gurus. And if you’re just learning the language and the platform, remember: a great tool is half the battle : )
Astella has an outstanding level of ActionScript, MXML, JavaScript, HTML5 and CSS coding support, a Flex (and JavaScript?) debugger and FlexUnit test runner. It bundles an ActionScript profiler and a MXML Designer. And there’s more: Astella has a customized Flash/Flex project configuration interface that allows you to easily configure your project, no matter its size or complexity! At the same time, it’s lightweight and speedy and will never interfere with what you’re doing.

Astella Early Access Program is now open! Please download these builds at http://confluence.jetbrains.net/display/AS/Astella+EAP.
We’re looking forward to your feedback at Astella forums and issue tracker.

Check for updates at the Astella blog: http://blog.jetbrains.com/astella, follow @AstellaIDE on twitter and Facebook!

Develop with pleasure!
JetBrains Astella Team

We’re working day and night to bring you more goodies in IntelliJ IDEA 10.5. Here are just a few more of them.

Introduce Variable (Field, Constant) refactoring now has a type chooser and makes it easier to work with untyped array elements (among other things):

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Latest EAP of IntelliJ IDEA 10.5 supports full cycle of Mobile AIR applications development: write code, compile, package, install, run and debug on emulator or Android device! Let’s look at common development workflow. (more…)

Do you know that one of the most effective ways of writing code in IntelliJ IDEA is Create From Usage approach, when first use a class, method, or other symbol, and IntelliJ IDEA then generates its declaration in a single click? Well, you do now, plus I’d like to give you two more examples of useful quick fixes that can generate routine code for you in no time.

Create Flex Skin

IntelliJ IDEA knows which MXML attributes must contain qualified name of a class. Class doesn’t exist? Invoke quick fix and get it right away.

In case of Skin class its behavior is even smarter. Write a skin class usage…

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Hi all ActionScript/Flex devs! I hope you enjoy using IntelliJ IDEA and I’m sure you’ll like it even more after you try Change Method Signature refactoring! It’s amazing how it allows you to quickly restyle your methods not only by renaming them, but also by adding, reordering, renaming, and deleting parameters, changing their types and default values.

All usages and overriding method declarations will be updated automagically, so your application compiles and works the same way as before with no extra care from your side!

Let me show you how it all works.

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