Flash Builder (which is a succesor to Flex Builder) is currently avialable in beta 2 version for some time now. Since Adobe is still postponing release date of final versions I decide not to wait any longer and try to grasp it’s new features in some application more complicated than samples provided in tutorials that could be found around the webAfter dowloading and installing application we get 60 days of evaluation period, but it can be prolonged using valid Flex 3 license number.

Flash Builder looks much the same as it’s older brother, but even on the first glance there are small changes that could make developer’s life easier – “Flex Naviagtor” which showed file structure of project in Flex Builder is now changed to “Package Explorer” which basically serves the same purpose but it doesn’t stop on the file level – you could expand each as or mxml file to see its attributes. properties and methods. Of course click on method take you dirrectly to it’s implementation – in fact from file level it looks and acts exactly the same as “Outline” view (which is still there).

When looking into code one could notice slighltly different ways of colouring code. Also Code assits works much better and more up to date with current standards when it comes to development environments. For example you could filter to only show events of certain component without need to scroll through numerous entities on hint list. The feature I found very useful durring some day-to-day work is connecting Code assits with Adobe livedocs with could save a lot of time when looking for explanation of some rarely used feature. Finally the code generation got feature of generating getters and setters with makes any excuses for not creating them futile. One of the most irritating feature of FlexBuilder 3 is also gone: when importing project into environment there is only one path to set. It was such a annoyance to have to copy path to second input each time because otherwise my project got copied to some “workdir” under “My documents”.

My general immpression is very good, Flash Builder is stable (at least with comparison to Flex Builder), there are some very nice features that was absent in Flex Builder 3 , and for those who don’t want to use Flex 4 SDK  (which is still beta) you can use  3.4 SDK as well. If you are got used to Flex Builder switching into new environment will be no problem because after all the core is still Eclipse.