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The IDE with the name "Flash" (or "Flash CC" in it's current version) is by far the best 2d animation tool in the industry. That said, despite an ever increasing IDE set of feature, it's horrendous for coding and debugging. The OpenSource project "Flash Develop" ( http://flashdevelop.org/ ) made AS3 usable by the many hobbyists writing games, as well as the AAA's doing UI work via Scaleform's Flash player.

For those not on the Flash/AS3 scene: there was the meme "Flash is Dead" that started about 3-5 years ago. It's not dead, as-in not at 0% usage, but for about two years it hasn't been a viable tech for most indies to use. (Flash via Adobe's AIR technology does work great on mobile but for some reason, perhaps due to the need of "Flash Builder", this doesn't have as great as a traction amongst indie game devs.) Most indie/AAA devs who really did a stellar job leveraging the low-level bits of Flash, ended up going to HTML5/Javascript or C#/Unity ( http://jacksondunstan.com/ ) . A few did jump over to HaXe ( http://haxe.org/ ), and the award winning "Papers Please" game showed HaXe is viable for indie commercial projects... but it's unproven for larger scale projects and the smaller size of the dev team working on HaXe, has some companies hesitant to explore it.

So it's great Adobe is adding these hooks to allow OpenFL / HaXe to become more accessible, and thereby help out both the Flash community and their own communities. ... but what about "Flash Builder"? The other Flash IDE, built upon Eclipse that is so broken that if you delete a local project through the Finder, it prevents the whole IDE from even starting up? Is Adobe dropping it? Are they adding the functionality to it? Are they going to make it as friendly to use as FlashDevelop? (I'd love to not have to boot Parallels, just to use a Windows-only IDE.)

Half of the (former-)Flash blogs I follow, sound as-if Adobe is transitioning away from Flash, putting resources into HTML/Javascript tools instead. And then occasionally, I hear about some new (usually game industry-related) features Adobe is installing in their Flash tools. But even when 100's of indie developers were making a full-time living, selling Flash games, there wasn't a single year at the Game Developer's Conference (GDC) that Adobe had a Flash presence and talked about games with their technology (with the exception of one year showing off "Adobe Director".)

Depending on if/how the sale of Unity goes to Google, or Microsoft, or whoever... this may be the one opportunity where Adobe can enamor game programmers with a Flash-based development environment (maybe other business sectors as well.)

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

So you're claiming that Flash Player is a security threat and a vector for malware. Is that correct?

OK, the article is about developing apps and web content that don't use Flash Player, i.e. HTML+JS+CSS, C++, etc.

An IDE they mention, OpenFL is free and open source. Anyone can see the source code and check for any potential malware or exploits.

Installing native apps in your OS is a way bigger security and privacy risk than accessing web content and apps through a browser.

Even if you do publish apps for Flash Player, Flash Player is less of a security/malware threat than Apple Quicktime, Adobe Acrobat, and Javascript (JS usually tops the malware threat charts). In fact, Flash Player consistently falls low on the lists of security threats. Flash Player is iTunes' App Store and Google Play's biggest competitor. Where did you hear that Flash Player is a malware problem again?

BTW, has anyone mentioned that FlashDevelop http://www.flashdevelop.org/ is free and open source and supports multiple export/compiling formats?

I have FlashBuilder on my Mac, I only use it when deploying a project to iOS - it is awful. One example: With the latest version (4.7) I deleted a project through the OS X Finder on my hard drive, that I had previously built with FlashBuilder. Afterwards it refused to start up, immediately crashing/closing, even after a reinstall of the entire Adobe suite (a recommendation on various forums.) It took a few hours combing through posts to find a helpful one that mentioned some obscure user data directory that had to be deleted.

Who writes an IDE that crashes when a project on disk is gone?

It's for this, and various other reasons, I continue to use the free, open-source alternative FlashDevelop ( http://flashdevelop.org/ ) for my Flash IDE. It's the only reason I keep a Parallels partition on my MacBook Pro.

http://www.flashdevelop.org/ + http://www.flixel.org/

+1 to this, start small with simple mechanics in a 2d space. Flashdevelop is a great, free tool that is easy to setup and use.

If you want to try using a Flash game framework, try something like Flixel.

http://www.kongregate.com/ runs these often as well. They are great fun. Newgrounds and Kongregate are two of the biggest flash sites.

I play games on Newgrounds sometimes. They often have game jams where games are created within so many hours.

What's the best way to compete in a Newgrounds game jam without buying a copy of multi-hundred-dollar Flash CS software?

Most of us use flash develop http://www.flashdevelop.org/ it is a free open source IDE for ActionScript/HaXe, that and the flex SDK (one comes bundled with flash develop) are all you need to develop for flash.

Then it would just be a matter of signing up on the site and getting involved.

You can use completely free and open source tools to create high-quality Flash content. For example, you can use the combo of Sun's JDK, the Free & Open source FlashDevelop IDE (Microsoft .NET 2.0 required) and Adobe's Open Source Flex SDK.

I read Steve Fulton's article that you linked. The gist is that nobody has yet written support libraries for Canvas-based game development.

On top of the fact that there aren't support libraries, it's also that the core API doesn't support basic functionality needed by game developers (such as playing two copies of the same sound simultaneously -- I.E. gunshots or explosions).

My cousin. He and others in his position have far more time than money, which is why they stick to Free or otherwise free tools. Imagine a high school student on summer break whose school isn't on the list of schools that get a discount on Flash CS5. These people are likely to be the people who write the support libraries that Canvas currently lacks.

Then he might be one of the people who is interested in the free and open-source compiler that Adobe released several years back. FlashDevelop is one of the best free tools for doing Flash development, though there are many many others.

I developed several games in Flash before I ever paid a single dime to Adobe -- using only free and open-source tools.

Good point, I didn't mention editors outside of the IDE as my gripe is that the editor in the Flash IDE has been neglected for years.

It's because of this I use FlashDevelop for all my Actionscript (both AS2 and AS3). I have a copy of Flex Builder and for non Flex based projects it is cumbersome. Perhaps it's just the integration with Eclipse but it doesn't have a snappy response to interaction like FlashDevelop. It does still have wins for debugging and SVN, although the FlashDevelop plug-in community is close to both of these.

I haven't wanted to try FDT after one of their salesmen spammed the e-mails of those on the FlashDevelop forums about trying their product.

These days I only pull open the Flash IDE if I need to work with my artist's assets.

When coding for Flash, I've found FlashDevelop ( http://flashdevelop.org/ ) to be the best IDE out there for doing AS2 (Actionscript 2) or AS3 (Actionscript 3) based work. Our UI team used it on the last AAA title we shipped and my current UI team is using it in our pipeline for the current games we're tackling.

The fact it's free and open source is great. The fact I can make an entire game in it without Adobe's Flash IDE, bringing in raw assets (mp3, graphics, etc..) and tie into compiled Flash assets (swcs) make it indispensable. I'm hoping the community efforts to get it working on Linux and Mac OS succeed as it's the only reason I start up Parallels on my Mac (other than to play a game or two of "Plants vs. Zombies.").

My background is someone who has taught Applesoft Basic, Turbo Pascal, and C++ to middle schoolers at a computer camp; I'll be teaching Flash (and potentially Processing) to artists in college with little to no prior programming experience.

I recommend using Flash with Actionscript 3 (AS3) based projects for teaching 11-14 year olds. It supports most all OO concepts, and because of its graphical nature there is instant feedback for a beginner. (e.g., mySprite.x += 5 );

If price of tools is a factor, a free development environment (such as http://www.flashdevelop.org/ ) can always be used.

An example of just some of the (visually) amazing programs you can pull off in 25 lines or less: http://www.25lines.com/?page_id=139

Also, you could consider porting your game to Flash. Actionscript 3 syntax is very close to Java now so porting shouldn't be as painful as porting from Java to C/C++.

If you don't want to pony up for the Flash or Flex IDEs, you can use the free Flashdevelop AS Editor/IDE + JDK + free Flex SDK combo.

You won't be able to publish for older phones with that combo tho but it should run on Flash 10 which will be running on upcoming phones (I think it was demoed on T-Mobiles G1 Android phone at Adobe Max earlier this week. Nokia and Sony-Ericsson's pretty chummy too, so expect Flash 10 to appear on future handsets ;)

Now where's our Flash for the iPhone, Apple? :P

So basically it's nothing like Flash at all then?

You are right.
Official web site.
They state that salasaga is a "Integrated Development Environment for producing eLearning". SWF is just an output media.

For those interested in Open source Flash tool. I'm currently testing FlashDevelop (IDE for Actionscript). Looks quite nice and useful
the web site (well an "official forum") (Windows compatible only AFAIK)
More info on here