I’ve spent some time lately learning how to extend Flash Builder, and finally have some results to show.

I’ve build a few projects using the Swiz framework, which I love, but I’ve always felt that adding event handlers in the controllers was a rather tedious task, requiring a lot of checking of what’s in the event and copy pasting. So I’ve started looking into ways that I could automatize the task, and ended up learning how to extend Eclipse and Flash Builder. The plugin is very raw and still has a long way to go, but it’s doing something useful, so I’ll start using it and keep working on it. Below a quick video showing it at work.

Spending a lot of time in front of a bright LCD monitor can be a real pain for the eyes. But there’s no good reason why you should keep the default white background behind your code. After a search I found that some people have already prepared configurations that will allow you to have bright text on a dark background.

Quick list of themes

fb-zenburnish – http://www.noiseandheat.com/blog/
Dark theme for Flash Builder 4 – http://www.likidu.com/blog/
The Typography of My Flash Builder – http://kevinsuttle.com/

After testing them for a while I’m currently using fb-zenburnish.

Installing a theme

First download the file, and unzip if necessary. You should have an .epf file. Now go to the Flash Builder, and from the File menu select Import->Other. (you might want to backup your current settings before importing the new ones, just choose Export instead of Import and it should be a straight forward process)

Than choose Preferences from the General node and click Next.

Than just browse for the epf file and click Finish.

Your brand new color scheme should be set.

Follow up – 2011-02-16

You can now find a lot of themes at www.eclipsecolorthemes.org