The launch, and our announcement of a technology partnership with Midnight Coders, has been covered everywhere from Infoworld and InfoQ to some of the more influential technology Blogs, as well as international sites such as Le Monde Informatique. Flash and Flex Developer’s Magazine also has two in-depth articles on Amethyst in this month’s issue.

For a more comprehensive guide to the press coverage of Amethyst, see the SapphireSteel Software forum.

I was especially pleased to read very favourable comments from some prominent Adobe people. We’ve always felt that Amethyst is a natural complement to Adobe’s own software. It brings Adobe technologies - Flash, Flex and AIR - into Visual Studio: an important IDE which has been something of an Adobe-free zone up to now. Amethyst also works in conjunction with Adobe’s own software, allowing Flash developers to do timeline-based work in the Flash IDE, for example, while programmers can work on the same codebase using Amethyst’s advanced editing and debugging features.

Here are what two Adobe evangelists had to say about Amethyst this week...

"If you are a Visual Studio user, Amethyst may be exactly what you need to bridge the worlds of Flash and .NET. On a personal note, I’ve been in regular contact with the SapphireSteel folks as Amethyst has evolved. This project, especially the Amethyst Designer, was an enormous undertaking on their part. And so to Huw Collingbourne and the crew at SapphireSteel, congratulations on reaching this milestone, and thank you for this important contribution to the Flash and Flex world."
Ben Forta (Adobe Director of Platform Evangelism)
http://forta.com/blog/index.cfm/2010/8/31/SapphireSteel-Releases-Amethyst

"This is really great news for all the Visual Studio fans that want to do Flash/Flax development with their favorite IDE. Amethyst IDE brings really incredible feature set of Visual Studio to Flash/Flex world. I really love how it handles component AS3 in a separate file, I hope something similar was available out of the box with Flash Builder! Really, really incredible!"
Piotr Walczyszyn (Adobe Platform Evangelist)
http://www.riaspace.com/2010/09/amethyst-visual-studio-ide-for-the-flash-platform-released

SapphireSteel Software’s Amethyst, the Flash Platform IDE for Microsoft Visual Studio, was launched on the 30th of August. If you would like to know more about Amethyst, the September issues of Flash & Flex Developer’s Magazine is a great place to look.

This issue carries two in-depth features on Amethyst. The first of these, called Introducing Amethyst, provides an overview of the core features of Amethyst Professional such as: the visual Designer for Flex, IntelliSense, refactoring, code formatting, code browsing and debugging.

The second Amethyst feature is an interview (with yours truly) which goes into some of the background of Amethyst: how did we manage to integrated a Flex-based Designer into Visual Studio? Why would Microsoft developers want to use Flash instead of Silverlight? What is special about the Amethyst Cylon debugger? (and much more...)

The magazine comes as a free PDF download. Available from the FFD Magazine web site.

With the release of Amethyst, developers now have an easy way to create Flash-based applications inside Visual Studio. The problem of linking Flash with .NET is solved by Midnight Coders’ WebORB which provides end-to-end client-server application development across the two platforms. The Midnight Coders and SapphireSteel Software technology partnership is aimed at implementing seamless integration of Amethyst with WebORB. This will give Visual Studio users a simple and elegant way of creating data-driven Flash Platform applications with a .NET ‘back end’.

More information on The Midnight Coders web site.

Amethyst Professional - the visual (drag-and-drop design) IDE for the Flash Platform - brings Flex, AIR, Flash and ActionScript development to Visual Studio.

In addition to its visual Designer, Amethyst also has powerful editing features includes code folding , extensive ActionScript syntax coloring and user-configurable code formatting. It provides fast IntelliSense and a superset of the refactoring capabilities provided as standard for C#. It also has a powerful ‘multi-process’ debugger which gives programmers the ability to debug multiple separately compiled programs (Flash SWFs) simultaneously.

 Visual Designer

The Amethyst Designer supports Adobe’s Flex 3, Flex 4 and AIR. It integrates fully with the Visual Studio tools such as the Toolbox, the Layout toolbar, the Properties panel and the code editor so that users can easily create and edit Flash-based user interfaces inside Visual Studio.

 IntelliSense

Amethyst Professional supports all the standard IntelliSense features including code completion, snippets (code templates), navigation bars to find methods and classes in the current code file plus Go To Definition and Find All References to locate references to classes, variables and methods throughout an entire project.

 Refactoring

Amethyst Professional supplies a range of automatic refactoring options (to help restructure the user’s code) including: Rename, Auto-generate getter and setter methods (‘encapsulate field’), Extract code into a new method, Move a class to a new package, Promote local variable to parameter, Remove parameters and Reorder parameters. All suggested refactoring changes can be previewed prior to starting a refactoring operation.

 Integration with Adobe Tools

Amethyst Professional can import projects created by Flex Builder, Flash Builder or the Flash IDE (CS3, CS4, CS5), so that teams of developers can work on a shared codebase. When a project is shared with the Flash IDE, animators may use Flash’s timeline-based development while programmers have access to the advanced editing and debugging tools of Amethyst.

 Debugging

The unique ‘Amethyst Cylon’ debugger supports simple breakpoints, conditional breakpoints and ‘break on hitcount’. It integrates with the Visual Studio debugging windows including the Watch windows, the Call Stack and the Immediate window. Programmers are able to evaluate expressions interactively in the Immediate window. The Amethyst Cylon debugger provides multi-process debugger including ‘listen and attach’ to enable the debugging of multiple compiled files (SWFs) simultaneously. When the debugger is in ‘listen’ mode it will auto-attach to one or more SWFs when they are loaded so that the programmer can debug by stepping out of one program into a different one in a single debugging session.

 Pricing and Availability

Amethyst Professional sells for $249 USD. A free 60-day Trial is available. At the end of the Trial period, the software degrades to Amethyst Personal (a free, limited feature version of the software) unless a licence is purchased.

 License

The Amethyst license permits a single user to make multiple installations of Amethyst (for Visual Studio 2008, Visual Studio 2010 or both) on one or more PCs. The software is licensed per user so a license is required for each developer.

 Amethyst Store
 Amethyst Download Page
 Amethyst Product Page
 Amethyst Features List
 Amethyst Tutorials

SapphireSteel Software announces the release of Amethyst, the Flex, Flash and ActionScript IDE for Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 and 2010. Amethyst Professional’s visual (drag-and-drop design) IDE for the Flash Platform - brings Flex, AIR, Flash and ActionScript development to Visual Studio.

Core Features...

Visual Design

 Drag&Drop design for Flex 3, Flex 4 and AIR
 ‘Round trip’ between Designer and code editor
 ‘Go Live’ mode lets users interact with controls in Designer
 Double-click control to create event-handlers (as in C# and VB)
 Integrates with Properties, Events and Styles palettes
 Layout toolbar to resize and align selected controls
 Align to grid or align to on-the-fly alignment bars
 Multi-level Undo/Redo (synchronized with code)

Code Editing

 Extended Code colouring (all VS standard colours + 76 more)
 Code folding (based on syntax and user-defined regions)
 Customizable code formatting (spacing, newlines, wrapping, indenting - 23 options)
 Supports standard VS editor options (split-windows, macros, indent/outdent etc.)

IntelliSense

 Code completion for ActionScript and MXML
 Double-pane completion lists (Common/All)
 Parameter completion tooltips
 Go To Definition
 Find All References

Refactoring

 Rename identifiers (auto rename all references in project)
 Auto-generate getters/setters (‘encapsulate field’)
 Extract code into new method
 Extract interface
 Promote local variable to parameter
 Remove parameters
 Reorder parameters
 Move class to a new package
 Preview changes before refactoring

Debugging

 Unique ‘Amethyst Cylon’ debugger fully integrated with VS
 Breakpoints (simple/conditional/on hit-count)
 Step into/over/out
 Multi-process debugging (debug multiple SWFs simultaneously)
 Debug windows: Watch, Locals, Autos
 Call Stack window with stack navigation
 Immediate Window for on-the-fly expression evaluation
 IntelliSense code completion in debug windows (e.g. Watch)
 Drill-down variable expansion in Watch window and code editor
 Run/Debug via file or server

Integrates With Adobe Tools

 Convert existing project ‘in place’
 Import existing project to new location
 Share project with Flash Builder or another IDE/editor
 Share project with the Flash IDE (CS3, CS4, CS5)
 Import Flex SDK for IntelliSense and code navigation

Other Tools

 Auto-expanding snippets with editable ‘replacement points’
 Snippet editor so user can easily create new snippets
 Support for VS Class View and Object Browser
 TODO comments listed in Task pane
 Support for user-defined ‘custom comments’ in task pane
 Publish-to-site project uploader
 Incremental compilation support
 Auto-versioning support
 Build automation (batch/command line support)
 Named build configurations
 Supports Team features such as Microsoft TeamServer

Pricing and Availability

Amethyst Professional sells for $249 USD. A free 60-day Trial is available. At the end of the Trial period, the software degrades to Amethyst Personal (a free, limited feature version of the software) unless a licence is purchased. Amethyst Professional will be available for purchase from 30th August, 2010.

More Information

 Amethyst Product Page
 Amethyst Features List
 Amethyst Tutorials

Amethyst is SapphireSteel’s Flash Platform IDE for Visual Studio. Available for purchase before the end of August. More news on the Blog soon.

We expect this to be the final release candidate before the launch of Amethyst Professional. More information and download details on the Blog: http://sapphiresteel.com/forum/index.php?topic=494.0.

More information on RC2 in the Forum.

Amethyst Professional supports development of Flex and Flash projects. You may use it to create new projects or import existing projects. You may even share the same code base between Amethyst and another editor or IDE such as Flash CS4/CS5 or Flash Builder.

Amethyst Professional includes a visual designer for Flex3, Flex 4 and AIR, advanced refactoring and IntelliSense, support for large and team-based projects (with features such as ‘project libraries’, incremental compilation, switchable SDKs, named build configurations, auto-versioning and TeamServer support), fast debugging with step into/out/over, conditional breakpoints, break-on-hitcount, call-stack navigation and drilldown expansion of variables in the watch window or code editor, extensive code coloring, customizable code formatting and much more. See the Amethyst Features List for a more detailed guide to its capabilities.

The final version of Amethyst Professional is expected to ship before the end of August. There will also be a free edition, Amethyst Personal. Amethyst supports both Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Studio 2010.

Amethyst RC1 is available on the Amethyst Download Page.

And I’m not just saying that because I have an article in it :-) . Anyway, it’s a free PDF download and you can get a copy here: http://ffdmag.com/.