IDE Plug-ins Rule! New Plug-in for Visual Studio Enables Flash/Flex Design, Dev, Debug and more...

Dec. 13, 2010 - PRLog -- Midnight Coders and Sapphire Steel Software, makers of WebORB and Amethyst recently launched a plug-in for Visual Studio.  This plug-in enables end-to-end design, development, debugging and integration of Flash (Flash, Flex, AIR)-based Internet applications all within the same Visual Studio session.  The plug-in also combines the best of Amethyst and WebORB in the familiar Visual Studio environment to ease .NET developer angst when developing for the Adobe Flash platform.

Beyond what Visual Studio offers, developers can expect to have the following additional features available to them without ever having to leave Visual Studio:

Amethyst
Amethyst is used for designing, editing and debugging client-side applications inside of Visual Studio.
•   Drag, Drop and Code – developers can simply drag and drop components onto the design canvas causing the underlying MXML code to automatically be rewritten.  Similarly, changes made by editing the MXML are automatically reflected in the Designer.  The Designer also makes use of the Visual Studio Layout Toolbar and all controls in the Amethyst Designer, unlike in FlashBuilder, are ‘live’.
•   Advanced ActionScript Editing – there are 23 separate formatting option, which have all the essential features offered by C# and VB editors.  One feature Visual Studio users love is auto-expanding snippets (code templates).  Amethyst supports not only snippets, but also the ability to create or edit snippets.
•   Code Browsing & Debugging -  Amethyst extends Visual Studio’s TODO tracker, enabling developers to define their own comment types and track all comments by type in the Task window.  Amethyst’s Cylon debugger enables developers to place simple or conditional breakpoints and drill down into variables in the Watch window or in hovering debug tips inside the code editor.  Developers can also debug multiple SWFs or debug across both client and server applications in a single session.
•   Project Importer – enables the Flash IDE and Amethyst to be used in the same project within the Visual Studio environment.  In this way, Flash projects can make full use of Amethyst’s advanced code formatting, refactoring, IntelliSense and debugging and still be available for timeline-based work in Flash CS3, CS4 or CS5.

WebORB for .NET
WebORB is used for integrating and running (marshalling all communications) client and server-side applications and now runs inside the Visual Studio IDE.  WebORB includes many productivity tools used to streamline development.  View Video>
The features included in the Amethyst/WebORB plug-in include:

•   Service Browser – lists all deployed services, including .NET classes, Spring.NET objects, WCF Services, WCF RIA Services and Web Services.  WebORB also supports custom pluggable server brownsers.
•   Code Generation – is an XSLT stylesheet (or collection of stylesheets) which contain information about a selected service (class), all its methods, method arguments, return value and all other referenced types and enumerations to produce source code, documentation and any other artifact necessary to create an integration between the client and server side class.  WebORB supports a dozen different code generators and allows developers to plug in their own custom code generators, making integration as simple as clicking a button.
•   Invocation Test Drive – supports Test-Driven Development allowing developers to invoke methods for client-to-server communication before the client is actually built, which keeps developers moving forward expeditiously.
•   Visual Studio Project Templates - WebORB templates for Visual Studio 2005, 2008 and 2010 are included in the basic installation.  When you create a WebORB-enabled website using a project template, the created project includes product configuration, a reference to WebORB assembly, management console and all the code generation templates.

A FREE 60-day trial of the Amethyst/WebORB IDE Plug-in for Visual Studio can be downloaded here: http://www.sapphiresteel.com/Products/amethyst-ide/Downlo...

A Getting Started Article is available here: http://www.themidnightcoders.com/products/weborb-for-net/...

SapphireSteel
SapphireSteel Software is the developer of the Steel IDE for programming Ruby and Flex in Microsoft’s Visual Studio.  The company is a division of Rosedown Mill, Ltd., a software development and consultancy company founded in 1994.  Visit http://www.sapphiresteel.com to learn more.

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Midnight Coders created WebORB – uniquely positioned as the only full-featured integration/media server in the world that is used to effortlessly connect various rich clients to multiple server-side resources. WebORB is a proven solution that destroys traditional development bottlenecks, enabling rapid, cost-effective development of the most creative, engaging and responsive Internet applications. Visit http://www.themidnightcoders.com to learn more.