Today is a good day for the Flash/Flex IDE market.  The long-awaited release of FDT 5 has come and its most recent feature-set complements the modern-day developer.  These days developers  find themselves having to a toe in many different waters just to stay competitive and up to date.

Personally, I feel this release of FDT 5 is a great leap for multi-platform IDEs and what to expect from them.

What is FDT 5?

FDT 5 is a flexible development toolkit in Eclipse for interactive developers. It’ s made with passion for expert Flash and Flex coding, innovative mobile development and versatile HTML5 / JavaScript / WebGL / PHP programming with haXe. Create your applications in FDT and efficiently target multiple platforms.

This release consists of a freemium and premium version.  FDT Free is free of charge and the perfect editor for small projects while FDT Max is the high-end IDE for all your advanced projects.

Download

New Features Include:

• haXe support
• Extract Method
• Extract Constant
• Extract Local Variable
• Convert Local Variable to Field
• ASDoc View
• Fat SWC ASDoc Support
• Sources Attachment for SWCs
• ActionScript ASDoc Support
• Breakpoint Support in Flex SDK
• Launching Mobile Projects
• Project Templates for haXe
• AIR SDK Merging
• … and more nice improvements

FDT haXe Features

One of the hot most requested feature in this latest release of FDT 5 is support for haXe.  Developed in collaboration with Powerflasher and supported by Influxis, the FDT’s haXe support provides developers a powerful tool for authoring in a multi target fashion.

FDT’s haXe features include:

• Live error checking
• Autocompletion (variables and functions)
• Syntax coloring
• New Class/Interface/Enum wizards
• HaXe Project Wizard

New to FDT?

Are you need to FDT?  If so, don’t worry.  You can find very helpful tutorials from setting up a FDT to using FDT’s debugger.  If you are comfortable with Flash Builder like I am, then this transition shouldn’t be too bad since it based on top off Eclipse.

FDT 5 is a great IDE  to watch out for as it headed in the right direction as a multi-purpose, multi-platform IDE.  Kudos to the Powerflasher team on producing a great and freemium product.

FDT 3 is a plug-in which boosts the already mighty open-source platform Eclipse and turns it into a powerful development environment for serious Flash and ActionScript coding.  This fantastic tool is built and maintained by the guys over at PowerFlasher.

Along with an impressive list of features, these features give you the opportunity of gaining a big boost in your programming efficiency as your work flow is improved.

If you are serious in working with ActionScript 3.0 or plan to work with a team of other programmers, then FDT is the one to get.  Unlike other ActionScript editors, this one is not free, but it is well worth it.

FDT comes in three versions: Basic, Professional, and Enterprise.  While all version pack a punch, check out the chart below to find out the key differences between the three.

Product Comparisons

The one major downfall of FDT 3 is how complicated the installation process is from other ActionScript editors.  The good news, however, is that the developers behind the project are currently working on a standalone version that will require minimal steps to install.

Download a trial version

Papervision3D is presenting an opportunity that will allow all Papervision3D users the ability to put their skills to the test.  It is called PaperKing3D.  The only really restriction of this contest is that it needs to involve the Papervision3D engine and the project must be open-source.

If you are able to convince the judges that your work is among the best not only will you impress the developers of Papervision3D and its community, but there will also be prizes for 1st and 2nd place winners.

Winner of 1st place will receive an Adobe Creative Suite Master collection.

The 2nd place winner will receive a copy of FDT Enterprise Edition.

These prizes should definitely drive the competitiveness of this competition through the roof.  The deadline for the PaperKing3D Competition is August 15th, 2008.  To enter a submission, email a zipped file to pv3dcontest_at_gmail_dot_com.