We’ll be announcing details of our Amethyst 2 products later in the year. This first beta is incomplete and many things will change as we draw closer to a final release. However, it will give you a first look at some of the exciting things we’ve been developing.

 Download link (Amethyst 2, beta 1, build 1309) (note: this link will only work until beta2 is released)

Below you see the new bubble-based debugger. When you stop at a breakpoint, the debugger loads the call stack into a series of linked bubbles showing the code of each method in the stack. In this case, the ‘start method’ is shown in the bubble with the green header, and the arrows let you trace the call execution through each successive method until you get to the ‘end bubble’ (with the pink header) at which the breakpoint was hit.

You can configure the bubble debugging to taste in Tools, Options, Debugging, Amethyst . If you don’t want to use debugger bubbles at all, you can turn them off and use the normal debugger only. You can change the colours of the bubble headers and you can display bubbles in a virtual window (‘free floating’ as shown above) or you can dock them into a tool window or place them in a normal window. Changes to the bubble window require a restart of Visual Studio to take effect.

If you are using a virtual window you can resize it in order to restrict the bubbles to a portion of the screen or even give them access to more than one screen on a multi-monitor system. To make the bubble region visible, click in a bubble and select ‘Show bubble region’. When The region is displayed you can resize or move it by dragging its corners. Deselect ‘Show bubble region’ when you have finished. You can use the same menu to arrange bubble by minimising, cascading, tiling or stacking them.

Other notable additions to this beta of Amethyst 2 include:
 Method bubbles
 A new Call Tree
 Find All References History navigator
 Built-in profiler
 Scratchpad to save code, bubbles and searches for easy re-use

As always when using beta software, be aware that this is unfinished, relatively untested and is not guaranteed to be suitable for any purpose. Use with caution. We recommend that you do not use it for work on critical projects and we cannot be held responsible for any problems or loss of work that may arise from its use. We recommend that you test it only on a non-critical PC or virtual machine.

I’ll give some more information on the other features of Amethyst soon. Watch the blog for details. When Amethyst 2 launches, reduced price upgrades will be available for Amethyst 1.x users. What’s more, we guarantee that anyone who buys Amethyst 1.5 now (at any date during 2012) will be able to upgrade to Amethyst 2 for no more than the price difference between Amethyst 1.5 and Amethyst 2. So don’t wait. If you are not already an Amethyst user, make the switch today and you’ll be offered an exclusive low-cost upgrade to Amethyst 2 later this year!

Anyone who works with Flash knows that just isn’t true. There are huge numbers of Flash developers, Flash is just as ubiquitous today as it was before Adobe’s November announcement and, what’s more, Adobe has said quite clearly that they aim to focus “Flash resources on delivering the most advanced PC web experiences, including gaming and premium video, as well as mobile apps.” But then again, if Adobe is so committed to Flash, how come they will taking the extraordinary step of removing the visual designer from their Flash Builder IDE? I’ll have a few comments on that later. For now, though, I want to tell you a bit about our plans for Amethyst, the SapphireSteel Software Flash Platform IDE. I’ll try to make sure our messages are as clear and simple as possible.

The Future of Amethyst

We are 100% committed to the continued development of Amethyst to support ActionScript development for Flash and for Flex. We will continue to support, develop and extend our visual design tools. Later in the year we will launch Amethyst 2 which (among other things) will include a unique bubble-based debugging environment (in addition to the traditional debugger), a built-in profiler, an obfuscator and dramatic improvements to features such as the call-graph, refactoring, code analysis and code navigation.

Let me say this again: Amethyst 2 will support Flex. Amethyst 2 will support Flash (including integration with Flash CS 4, CS5.x etc.). Amethyst 2 will support all normal types of ActionScript development.

If you are already a user of Amethyst 1.x, there will be a low-cost upgrade path. If you buy Amethyst 1.5 any time in 2012, we guarantee that you will not lose out when you upgrade to Amethyst 2. Your upgrade cost will no more than the difference in price between the version 1.5 and version 2.0 product. We are completely and totally committed to Amethyst. No ifs, no buts.

But Isn’t Flash Dead…?

OK, now let me return to the confused messages coming from Adobe. In my view, the real confusion derives from the rather messy history of the Flex framework. Flex provides an extended class library for Flash. However, for reasons which I never understood, Flex was not made the ‘default’ library for Flash and it has never been (easily) available to users of the Flash IDE – CS4, CS5 etc. Instead, Flash developers were encouraged to move to another IDE. Adobe’s Flex IDE was called Flex Builder. Rather late in the day, Adobe seemed to realise that the naming of the IDE only reinforced the idea that Flex and Flash were completely different things. To try to hammer home the message that they were closely related, Adobe renamed their IDE to Flash Builder. Meanwhile, instead of talking about Flash and Flex, as they had in the past, they now began talking about ‘The Flash Platform’ as though it was all one, neatly integrated thing. Which, of course, it wasn’t.

Adobe then spent ages trying to rewrite Flex 3 and create Flex 4. In my view, they never fully succeeded. Flex 4 was released as a sort of hybrid that supported stuff from Flex 3 (including various components that had not yet been ‘migrated’ to Flex 4) as well as a whole batch of completely new stuff. In order to get the old stuff to work with the new stuff, a lot of not terribly elegant fixes were done. This ended up by creating a framework in which the components couldn’t even agree on what was meant by a ‘parent’ or a ‘child’. Believe me, that fact alone has caused me personally a lot of headaches. When we had to rewrite the Amethyst Designer to support Flex 4, each control that the user dragged and dropped onto an interface had to query its parents and children in order to determine whether they were from Flex 3 or Flex 4 and then decide how to interact with them. Making the wrong choice can crash the program. If you are interested, you can read more about this problem in an article I wrote for Flash and Flex Developer’s Magazine. The language I used in that article was a good deal more polite than the language I used in real life. Suffice to say, I have, er, ‘some significant reservations’ (this is me being polite again!) about Flex 4.

At any rate, having spent time trying to blur the boundaries between Flash (the Flash player, its programming language and libraries) and Flex (an additional set of classes aimed, principally, at data-driven development), it is not at all surprising that when Adobe pulled the plug on Flex, many people presumed they were pulling the plug on Flash too. Well, that’s not the case and Adobe has tried to get the message across that it isn’t the case. But still many people now think that it is the case.

A lack of Flex-appeal?

If you’ve found the Adobe announcements confusing, this is my take on it: Flex is an extended framework for creating data-driven applications using a Flash front end. The Flex framework has never been as successful as Adobe hoped so they’ve offloaded it for other people to look after. HTML 5 should be able to do most of the form-based data-centric things that Flex was targeting anyway, so Flex’s raison d’etre may not be raison enough.

Having dumped Flex, there is not much incentive now for Adobe to commit resources to the Flex IDE, Flash Builder, which explains why they have stated that the design view will not be developed in future. Flash, however, remains important to Adobe. Flash is everywhere on the Internet and many of the most successful games (check out Facebook) are implemented in Flash. Moreover, Adobe has a whole bunch of graphics, animation and web development tools that continue to make good money out of Flash developers.

Amethyst 2 – You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet!

OK, the question is: so how does this affect Amethyst? Answer: not at all. Amethyst supports all types of Flash Platform programming. If you want to use Flex, that’s fine. If you don’t, that’s fine too. Amethyst has the best debugging and refactoring tools available for ActionScript. Unlike Flash Builder, Amethyst’s visual design environment is not being deprecated. On the contrary, we are actively developing it to add an even broader range of features. The same goes for the debugger. The Amethyst ActionScript debugger already boasts numerous unique features: you can use the current version to debug multiple SWFs simultaneously, to debug between ActionScript and C# in a single session, to hover and drill-down into complex objects right inside the code editor, to set simple and conditional breakpoints, navigate the call-stack and much more besides.

As for our new debugger (the one that we’ll be releasing in Amethyst 2 later in the year) – prepare to be blown away!

Here is a first look at Amethyst 2. What you see here is one of our new debugging features. Suffice to say, while Amethyst 1.5 has (in our opinion!) by far the best ActionScript debugger currently available, you ain’t seen nothing yet!

We’ll be releasing the first public beta of Amethyst 2 soon. Be sure to keep an eye on this blog for more details. When Amethyst 2 launches, reduced price upgrades will be available for Amethyst 1.x users. What’s more, we guarantee that anyone who buys Amethyst 1.5 now (at any date during 2012) will be able to upgrade to Amethyst 2 for no more than the price difference between Amethyst 1.5 and Amethyst 2. So don’t wait. If you are not already an Amethyst user, make the switch today and you’ll be offered an exclusive low-cost upgrade to Amethyst 2 later this year!

We’ve just uploaded a video to show how to create a simple Ruby On Rails blog in under five minutes. The video itself is a bit longer than that since we couldn’t resist taking the opportunity to show off the Ruby In Steel ’Cylon’ debugger. Even so, this shows you how to go from start to finish in less time than it takes to make a cup of coffee. And not a command prompt in sight! :-)

We have just added a new Installation Guide to guide you through the process of installing everything from a free edition of Visual Studio (if you need one) to the Java runtime and Flash Debug Player necessary to support Flex or Flash development.

For more videos, see the Amethyst Tutorial Library.

The new version of Ruby In Steel Professional provides a powerful integrated Ruby and Rails development environment for Visual Studio users. It can be installed either into a commercial edition of Visual Studio 2010 or into a free ‘Shell’ edition of Visual Studio. Users who don’t own a commercial edition of Visual Studio can make use of our all-in-one installer to simplify the installation of the VS 2010 Shell, a Ruby interpreter and Ruby In Steel.

This video gives an overview of installing Ruby In Steel 2 using the all-in-one installer...

Ruby In Steel 2 provides...

 The fast ‘drill-down’ Cylon Debugger with conditional breakpoints, watch variables, call-stack and more
 Powerful editing with Ruby code coloring and formatting
 IntelliSense
 Auto-expanding snippets plus a snippet editor
 Code navigation tools (Nav Bars/Go To Definition etc.)
 Integrated Ruby and IRB consoles
 Support for Ruby 1.8 and 1.9
 Class library navigation (The Ruby Explorer)
 Tight integration into Visual Studio 2010
 Integrated Rails development tools

Ruby In Steel 2 is available for $249. Registered users of Ruby In Steel 1 may apply for a special upgrade price by contacting SapphireSteel Software (please supply your registered user name and serial number).

Ruby In Steel 2 Professional is available for a 60 day free trial period. After the 60 day period you may buy a license to unlock the full features Ruby In Steel 2 Professional. Alternatively, you may opt to downgrade the software to Ruby In Steel 2 Personal Edition. The Personal Edition provides support for Ruby project creation and editing but it does not support advanced features such as IntelliSense and the Cylon Debugger.

For more information see: The Ruby In Steel Product Page and Features List