Microsoft Visual Studio Developers get Flash development capabilities
Amethyst is an IDE with Flex, Flash, and ActionScript development capabilities for Visual Studio 2008 and 2010. Microsoft-based developers can design, code, and debug Flash applications and Flex applications without being forced to use an unfamiliar IDE, SapphireSteel said. Adobe AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) capabilities are offered as well.
With Amethyst, Visual Studio users can leverage the more-established Flash platform instead of Microsoft's rival Silverlight, stressed Huw Collingbourne, director of technology at SapphireSteel.
'Adobe claims that over 99 percent of Internet-connected computers have the Flash Player installed. Clearly, in order to reach the widest user base, any Web-based application that requires the sort of interactive features provided by Silverlight would, in principle, be able to reach a larger audience if that front end were implemented using Flash.'
Amethyst is visual, with developers able to drag components from the Visual Studio toolbox and drop them onto the Amethyst Designer for building Flash user interfaces. The product works like C# and Visual Basic environments,
Projects can be imported to Amethyst from Adobe tools, including Flex Builder, Flash Builder, or the Flash IDE. The Amethyst Cylon debugger supports simple and conditional breakpoints and 'break on hit count'