Hi guys, I recently saw that a new branch in the SVN for FD4, and it makes me very excited.
As I follow the development of this product since 2005 with FD2, and I know it started before, And I even had the opportunity to contribute some code that was accepted and became part of the program, I feel like I am taking a (very) minor part of the development, like many others that are not the main developers.

FD2 was a very good AS2 code editor. Actually the best code editor. Even now FD3 is the best code editor but it is also a pretty mature IDE for all kinds of Flash (and haXe) programming.

For FD4, I think its the time to take it a little further. These are only my thoughts, you may relate to them, but you may also ignore them.

The Things that will make FlashDevelop a full grown IDE are, for my opinion:
- Full support for all kinds of flash editing. For now only AS2, AS3 and haXe are enjoying this support. Should be adding MXML, CSS, HTML, and XML (seeing the xml tree in the outline)
- Visual editor for MXML and CSS. Taking what is already made, and integrating them.
- Test environment integration: There is the option to open a flash in new tab. I want the option to open HTML that contains that flash, in a new tab. In AS2 (and since FD2) the traces are sent to the result panel as well, I would like to see it in AS3 too. And so on.
- Out Of The Box experience. Sadly, while developers will spend a lot of time trying to make ECLIPSE or FLEX suite their needs, in FD they neglect it pretty fast. If FD will "just work" (as it is now for some, if not most, of the cases) this would make it a big advantage.
- User interface customization: A central place to configure Hotkeys, Menus and ToolBars.
- Macro integration: The introduced Macro management is a HUGE leap forward. However it is very basic and only some people (me not including) can really make it a power tool.

For the last 2 I want to suggest a solution:

Make a plugin that will listen to all the hotkeys in the application. For each hotkey, it would fire a plugin command. All the plugins should first register the command, and the suggested default Hotkey and listen to this command coming from the hotkey plugin.
Even the MainMenu.xml will listen to commands, instead of the hotkey them self, OR in the other hand, there could be an XML that will not be shown and will contains these commands and hotkeys configuration.

The hotkey plugin could be configured separately from all the other plugins, in a central place. It could detect conflicts, it could have a friendly interface, or the default PropertiesInspector interface.

It could RECORD ALL THE COMMANDS and save them in a file, to be executed by the MACRO plugin.
It could SEND the macro plugin an ACTIVATE command not only for hotkeys, but for other events.

The macro plugin should know how to register it self not only for special hotkeys, but for each hotkey. Maybe some devs want to create a macro that will be executed just before the completion list is populated, or after a failed build, or when moving from one function to another (Did you know that the Outline panel send this event?).


Now, I was experiencing with hotkey and macro plugins for FD some time ago, but nothing usable came out of it.
I have a very little free time, but I want to suggest myself to investigate (maybe not Solo, but with the help of the developers) the hotkeys and macro. If you want, I will send you what I've got so far.

What is your thoughts?

We have have a big todo list and even longer wish list where most of your suggestions are. We do appreciate all the help we can get.

To avoid confusion i will list and describe what we are trying to do with FD4.

- Update branding graphics to more visual appealing ones [DONE], maybe logo [?]
- Implement new shortcut management functionality with easy to use dialog [DONE]
- Improve the interface with nice menu hightlights in menu items, buttons etc. [DONE]
- Improve the templating to be consistent in all areas (template, snippets, generators) [DONE]
- Slightly revise the internal code to be more flexible with plugins and scripts [DONE]
- Improve user experience with clear menu organization etc [PROGRESSING]
- Add some of the vital 3rd party plugins and code to FD [PROGRESSING]
- Fix all the bugs and usability issues we can find [PROGRESSING]
+ Other things i can't remember right now

So basicly we are improving FD3 and enabling more things in the future. Also we try to make this happen so that 3rd party plugins won't break totally.
At the moment they only need to be republished against FD4.

All comments and ideas are more than welcome.