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The Top Ten Open Source Actionscript Tools

What Does "Open Source" Mean?

Open source is more than just accessible source code, and its actionscript tools should follow the criteria below:

• The code should not restrict from giving away or selling products built with or on top of it but freely redistributable as part or a larger project.
• The project must include editable, freely accessible, freely downloadable source code.
• Anyone may create a derivative version of the project and they may redistribute it under freely. If the license does not allow modifications of the original source code it must allow “patch files” to modify it at build time.
• The license must not discriminate against any person or groups. Literally anyone can use and modify an open source project.
• The software license must be independent of any particular product, technology or development style. It must take an absolutely neutral stance on how it is used.

Top Ten Open Source Actionscript Tools

Flash designers and developers love a countdown of the best open-source Actionscript tools. So let's have a check.

Actionscript Tool 10: FLVTool2

FLVTool2 is a actionscript tool for manipulating FLV’s metadata after it is created reliable cue-points in FLV.

Actionscript Tool 9: Xray

Xray (The AdminTool), a "snapshot viewer" of the current state of your Flash application, do not impact the performance or the file size of your application. Every object and property will be found easily and instantly even without any impact on the application itself. Although someone feel a little complicated to setup initially, once it runs he or she may regard it as an indispensable debugging tool.

Actionscript Tool 8: Actionstep

The actionscript tool is a complete replacement for the buggy V2 components in the Flash IDE. It is a good choice for components if you are developing Flash projects in an entirely open-source environment, considering that Adobe's license does not permit the use of its components without a licensed copy of the Flash IDE.

Actionscript Tool 7: AFLAX

Without ever using the Flash IDE, the actionsctipt tool combines Ajax and Flash to give JavaScript access to Adobe’s Flash runtime - including graphics, networking, video and camera support.

Actionscript Tool 6: SWFMill

It is a actionscript tool in command line: XML to SWF to XML processor using SWFML, an XML dialect closely modeled after the SWF format. It compiles libraries with images and fonts or even complete SWFs wtih SWFMill and MTASC.

Actionscript Tool 5: AsUnit

The only open source unit test framework supports AS 2.0 and 3.0 but not bind you to any development tools. AsUnit with its platform independence, Flash IDE integration and Mozilla XUL UI is the better for the complex projects to merit unit testing.

Actionscript Tool 4: FlashDevelop

An AS2/AS3 actionscript tool built on .NET, a powerful development environment with no hassles. It is quite easy to setup and use with low overhead as an external editor for the Flash IDE or as a complete open source developement enviorment.

Actionscript Tool 3: Eclipse

Eclipse is an open extensible IDE for everything built with Java. This actionscript tool is sophisticated and mature to make it the development environment of choice for lots of developers in different languages. Actually, Adobe FlexBuilder2 is built directly on top of it.

Actionscript Tool 2: MTASC

This actionscript tool is the best actionscript 2.0 complier at present. For the immensely extensible, lightning fast and very scriptable feature, many other projects on this list depend on MTASC for compiling.

Actionscript Tool 1: Fuse

Fuse, the most robust and efficient AS 2.0 tween engine in the world, is an animation sequencer with highly compact, legible syntax, easy and powerful handling of Flash 8 BitmapFilters, and the ability to tween any numeric property of any class, not just MovieClip. It is the top actionscript tool with great usability and practicality.