Hi FD team,

First of all, let me say that you are doing a good work.
I have been looking for a decent AS ide (mean not macromedia's one !) and FD seems a good candidate.

I'm looking for some newbie-user documentation, I must say it's not so easy to find something comprehensive, you have to digg in many places in the forum to find some explanation.

I think a document "my first project with FD" could be of great value.
It could show a typical Flash-AS project with
- classpath customization,
- how to use AS completion,
- how to generate swf
- some advices on good project structure.

Another remark concerning the editor :
is it possible to hide the left part showing line numbers ?
it uses a lot of space which is disturbing to me (knowing Ctrl-G shortcut is enough for my happyness )

Thanks and be proud of FD it's a nice work !

Joel

Hi
Fantastic program
I second the request for a 'newbie' walkthru, and some basic documentation.

For example...changing the font...I search under Tools/Program settings...

Yes, I agree that this program *looks* great, but I'm really struggling to get anywhere with it.

You can dig into some good threads to know about the various possibilities of FlashDevelop.

Color customization has been often asked but there isn't a nice GUI for that.

We really plan to write detailed tutorials but we kind of lack time for that...

>>>We really plan to write detailed tutorials but we kind of lack time for that...

I have to say, this is the kind of attitude that really frustrates me about the Open Source Movement: "I don't have time, so I'm going to make my users waste their time." How many hours did you spend building this product? Hundreds? Thousands? How many hours would it take to write a couple of basic tutorials? A few? How can that not be worth it?

If you want to build an audience for this product through a public beta, tutorials and documentation are essential. They should be a part of your development roadmap. I should not be expected to sift through message board threads to get the basics!

I'm apologize if this sounds snippy or obnoxious. I would really like to see your team succeed. And it's extremely frustrating for me to see a great product failing because no one is taking charge of documentation. Look at what a great job Nicolas has done with Haxe -- documenting while developing. He's set a standard for all to strive for...

Well, I agree with you!

We spend quite a lot of time answering in the forum and some threads (I've put a wrong link in my previous answer) are full of usefull informations - but it's a waste of time for newcomers to dig in.

But don't worry, we'll find the time to write tutorials!

PS: Nicolas' haXe is a different topic - it's not just a side project and he's got community support on writing the documentation.

Do it yourself?

We started a samples & tutorials page.

There's currently a first "FlashDevelop-only" sample with some explanations but we (or you) will add other documents to explain various capabilities of FD

I think my original point was that it makes a lot more sense for the developers to do the documentation, and plan it as part of the project. It would take me about 10 times as long to do the same work.

I'll do what I can to be supportive of this community, but I also need to make a living.

I am brand new to flash, never used C#, just now realize that I must learn php to use MySQL all to put a store on-line. I am so new at this that I just learned how to do a web page with Dreamweaver last fall and am now attempting to make my site more interesting. Using Dreamweaver and placing a PayPal shopping cart in my store has taught me some html programming, but now I am expanding into other areas. At least I can read the html code now. I just last week decided to learn what flash was--let alone how to use it. No, I am not currently taking a class, but teaching myself. I have a masters and specialist in education and do not plan to go back to school.

Point is, I thought a newbie forum would be useful--maybe a usergroup for newbies? While I learn how to make flash items (see, I do not even know the proper vocabulary!) I will try to mention my attempts and learning/difficulties on my blog or my primary site. Then maybe together we newbies can add tidbits to the user manual. Would a "How I did this" be an appropriate forum for the newbie usergroup?

I am determined to use the CBT template that I just purchased, not knowing that I would need a flash editor to use the template. So here I am. Using a flash editor. I have tried 2 trial versions of editors from download.com. From them and my attempt to use the template in the editors, I quickly discovered that I would need to either spend some money or get a free editor--so here I am. Go ahead and laugh. I feel a bit rediculous myself.

Hi Valerie,

Developing with FlashDevelop may not be the easiest thing in the world at this point, and you're definitely going to have a struggle with the lack of documentation. But if you can persevere, you'll find there is no better solution for serious Flash development. That said, you may still need to invest in the Adobe Flash if you want to design interactive vector graphics for your application.

Also, make sure to check out the Flashcoders and Flashnewbie mailing lists at http://training.figleaf.com/resources/

Good luck.

FlashDevelop is the absolutley wrong way to learn flash, I'm sorry to say that. Because of the language style that is so differant from all other languages, I mean in the sence of the way movieclips works and the double hirarchey of movieclips and "normal" classes, its essential to learn flash programming using flash.
After you have the basics of actions on frames, then you can move to as2 and OOP style, still developing with actions on frames - and only then you can move to pure OOP desine and use FD.

Thanks to you both.

So no newbie Usergroup here? Or are you not webmasters to make that decision?

I explored FlashDevelop this am after my first post. I see what you mean about programming. I opened the template CBT 1 that I wanted to work on. It opened beautifully. But I when I tried to save it under another name, I crashed the program because I did not type in the file type. Only all files was listed in the choices of file types in my Windows menu. I will try to save it with a file type next. Then I will see what my next step will be.

This was only a recommendation. Ever guys in my work who are experienced programmers with OOP JAVA and whant to learn flash, I tell to open Macromedia Flash Studio instead of FD. They need to know the basic flash.