I must say, I love the concept and idea of this program and am now using it regularly and will contribute support to the project going forward.

However, until I managed to correctly get the full AS2/AS3 Syntax to color properly (more completely that is, including enumerated values and nested dot syntax collections) along with my general taste for code coloring, Flash Develop was never a complete solution/alternative in my opinion.

I highly suggest that more attention be put forth to including ALL of the AS2 AS3 pieces and parts that would normally be colorized in the Flash IDE, into the Flash Develop IDE. Seriously, if addChild is blue in Flash, it should be blue in Flash Develop, no?

My only gripe still to this day... you guys MUST find a way to separate the code coloring into separate configurables for operators versus the other characters like semicolons, periods, hyphens and equal signs etc. that are lumped in with the operators group. I don't want my friggin' mathematical characters/operators the same color as the equal sign and semicolon characters... or paren's, or braces for that matter. Even the lousy Flash IDE has a partial handle on this aspect with the ability to add the mathematical operators to the collection of 'say red' configurable coloring or whatever you choose.

The tedious results of my probably unpopular efforts to contribute to the Flash Develop community are below.

FILES CHANGED:
* ScintillaNET.xml
* AS3.xml
* AS2.xml
* CSS.xml
* HTML.xml
* XML.xml

Default Coloring:


Proper Coloring: (with exception for mathematical operators )


XML Tags Changed for AS2 AS3:


XML Tags Changed for ScintillaNET:


LINK TO SAMPLE FILES (.zip):
* http://www.ifmaybe.com/FlashDevelopXMLs.zip

Note: navigate to your Flash Develop install folder [i]......\FlashDevelop\FirstRun\Settings..... , back up the files currently there to another location, replace with the files in the .zip package and restart Flash Develop. Now you get the idea.[/i]

I still am baffled by the amount of developers coding day after day over a white background with hardly distinguishable syntax coloring. I'm telling you it's prudent to devise your own coloring scheme, make Flash Develop more color-customizable-friendly and your product/productivity will improve many fold in no time at all.

Nice color scheme. Saved me lots of configuration time and eyestrain.

Maybe we could do a flash GUI to change these xml files. Doesn't look that hard, maybe a week's worth of coding?

All this coloring stuff is build into the component that we are using (Scintilla) and the parser isn't as complex you would like it to be. If somebody would like to contribute to FD, create a true AS2 and AS3 parsers for Scintilla component. Those colored methods are actually just a bad excuse for a lousy code "completion" by Adobe.

The configuration UI isn't easy as it seems hence the dynamic nature of the scintilla component but it is on our todo list.
This current setup (coloring etc.) is just mimicing real IDE's like for example Visual C#.

All you need to know that all of us are doing this in our spare time so 1 weeks worth of coding is more likely to be 1 month of coding in real time.

Mika, totally well said and understood.

I am actually considering now writing a stand alone application suggested by ohappyle. With my trusty Visual Studio 2008 (VB) suite, it would seem possible to supply your team with the GUI/EXE/VB Project files so they could integrated into the Flash Develop IDE somehow for users to WYSIWYG their code coloring etc., or at the very least, provide a stand alone .exe in the interim.

Just a start, and you are probably correct, there is a ton of work to do for this sort of stuff and I'm sure there are plenty of other higher priorities on the plate.

Hi Third_Eyer,

I downloaded your custom xml files, and restarted fd, but my background color stays white (all the other colouring seems to work). Did you have to do anything special to get the background black?

Yeah, there is an XML file where you set your main background to 0x000000 (black).

It's the file called:
ScintillaNET.xml

It's supposed to be in the folder:
Drive:\...pathto....FlashDevelop\FirstRun\Settings\

If you change the 'Languages' xml files you also probably should change the ScintillaNET.xml file as well, since it apparently contains global styles and defaults.

Thanks, I actually realized my mistake shortly after my post: I had simply thrown all the files in your zip (including ScintillaNET.xml) straight into the Languages folder inside Settings. I moved ScintillaNET.xml up into Settings and everything works great. Now it just annoys me that I can't make my entire OS (or at least the rest of FD) black - I tried but there are always one or two things in certain apps that won't display correctly.

hey Third_Eyer,

I've been enjoying your color scheme very much.. have you by any chance done the same thing for Eclipse? Or do you know anyone who has?

cheers,

Hi guys,

I just tried replacing the files in the zip... and after re-starting Flash Develop like 5 times and re-starting the computer too... My screen is still bright white and not coloring for the properties in AS2/3.

And yes I made sure (very sure) that the files replaced in the settings folder where the ones that I downloaded from this thread.

I am using the most recent version of Flash Develop which I upgraded yesterday.

How come I can't get it work

edit: I just purposely deleted completely ALL the files inside the Settings folder... and to my surprise... FlashDevelop stills runs perfectly fine... with the white bright screen. So it's running with an empty settings folder ?

You probably modified the "user template files". Go to your user files by choosing Tools > Application Files... in FD main menu.

Beautiful! Thank you so much!

If only we can get the kind of color scheme that pixelbreaker uses:



He's using FDT.

But on this screenshot, he's using Eclipse.
Read the article:
http://blog.pixelbreaker.com/flash/acti ... e-on-os-x/
FD don't run on Mac OSX. If he's writing an article about pixel fonts in OSX, there's no meaning to put a screenshot of FD on Windows.

And, by the way, there's no way to do such code coloring like that on FD. yet.
http://www.flashdevelop.org/community/v ... php?t=1903

Do not confuse FD (FlashDevelop) and FDT (an Eclipse commercial plugin). FDT has a more granular code model so it can provide a better code coloring.

Thanks for a very interesting color scheme - I am going to go with it.

I run at 1920x1200 so I am using a different font/fontsize

You may want to try out Cambria 14pt - it looks quite nice.