FDT 4 is released!!!

Monday, September 27th 2010 you will be able to buy the new FDT 4 Pure, Plus or Max.

We are excited that FDT 4 is being considered the best Powerflasher release ever, and it's thanks to you!

A bit of history

When Powerflasher was founded in 1997 as a digital interactive agency, many flash developers were missing a professional ActionScript code editor to build cutting edge software applications. In the year 2001 we decided to start building our own IDE based on Eclipse. The developers loved it and it spread like crazy. FDT 1.0 was born!

FDT 4 and the community

Starting in January 2010 with the release of FDT 3.5 we traveled the world to meet you at work, conferences (and of course some great parties). We openly shared the FDT 4 roadmap with you and, being big agile advocates, we made our internal iterations/sprints public free Milestones! We worked iteratively with you and we worked hard! Your contributions, constructive support, and great ideas were an integral part of the FDT 4 release and we think you'll be pleased with the spectacular list of new features. Just to name a few:

Making Things Easier

A completely new SDK management and project setup makes it simple to get started quickly, switch Flex SDKs or change the project type easily.

Profiler

The brand new Profiler will help you find memory leaks more quickly and optimize the performance of your Flash/Flex projects.

Project Templates

Choose from a list of available project templates in the “New Project Wizard” or easily create your own using a simple XML format.

Launcher Chain

Chain multiple launch configurations in any desired order to setup complex build processes fast and easy and adapt FDT to your project team workflow.

Additional Flex Support

Flex support was improved dramatically, it includes FXG, Flex 4 States and the new MXML 2009 language tags now. We added Flex 4 support for the Debugger, Organize Imports, Quickfixes, Formatter and Toggle Comment in MXML.

Dependency Visualizer

View the dependencies between Classes and Interfaces or between packages visually to detect design or dependency problems at a glance.

Font Library Creator

Create font library SWF or SWC files with just a few clicks by using the new Font Library Editor.

Advanced Formatter

We added even more options in the AS3/MXML Formatter settings to configure your preferred code style or follow your team code guidelines.

Faster Compiler

Full and incremental build times have decreased tremendously while memory consumption was dramatically reduced, this is especially noticeable in bigger projects with multiple modules.

ActionScript 2 support

As Adobe is moving away from ActionScript 2, so is Powerflasher putting more effort into future languages as well. We however acknowledge there are still many projects developed in AS2, including some new exciting embedded devices applications. For this reason, we have decided to still offer FDT 3.5 with the full Enterprise features with AS2 support as an option for all FDT 4 customers for 99$

FDT Labs

In parallel to our milestones, we created the FDT labs, an open playground. We built the SDK  to empower you to create your own plug-ins and you did: The haXe (Beta) plug-in supported by Influxis and the FDT Code Metrix Pflection plug-in from iceX33. The Dependency Visualizer and Font Creator born from the labs playground as plug-ins are now core functionality of FDT 4!

We are committed in providing a cross-platform experience. We are very proud to have the opportunity to extend Linux support in our Labs with the help of the community.

New product names: Pure, Plus & Max

We kept the name Pure because we could not express better what the FDT Pure Coding Comfort is about. Pure great editing features enables the smooth workflow you are all raving about. FDT Professional is now called Plus. In addition to the Coding Comfort, Plus adds the navigation features to help you become more productive and work collaboratively. FDT Enterprise becomes Max. FDT Enterprise is not only for corporations, if you are either a freelancer or working in a team of power developers, performance is what you need! It’s about enabling developers to break barriers and maximize their productivity by taking advantage of state of the art IDE features power developers truly deserve.

New Prices

Since then we have released several upgrades, mostly for free. The last upgrade we charged was in the beginning of 2008 with the FDT 3 Enterprise release. For about tree years all upgrades were available for free, including FDT 3.5. We also decided to give all new FDT 3.5 buying customers a free FDT 4 upgrade! It’s now time to pay the bills and further invest to keep the engineering team and you happy ;).

Upgrades from FDT 3

Current FDT 4 or FDT 3.5 user upgrades*

Downloads

Now get your hands on FDT and start coding.

Please use this temporary license until a new pesonalized key is available starting this Monday, September 27th 2010

Follow these links to get your FDT copy for Windows or for Mac

Please follow this instructions for Linux:
We are working on making the Linux version as stable as possible (Currently on Beta)
1. Download and install your Eclipse
2. In the Eclipse Menu: Help ->Install New Software
3. Add the following URL: http://fdt.powerflasher.com/update

Special thanks...

The FDT 4 release is a result of this journey, thanks to your support and the passion of the big Powerflasher FDT family!

Stephanie, Meinhard, Philipp, Sebastian, Simon, Florian, Maxim, Keisuke, Olli, Britt, Stefan(s), Timo(s), Andre, Mattes, Alan, Clement, Bruno, Michael, Nico, Robertina, Sabrina and Carlo, the Powerflasher Developer and Designer Team (aka FDT guinea pigs) and last, but not least, you!!!