Amethyst Launch Announced

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