July 8th, 2008

1001 Ways to Debug in Flash

I have checked out something like over 1000 different ways (number inflated for more drama) to debug Flash content within the browser and picked out the following 4 decent tools:

SOS looked sweet for a moment, because it used an XML Socket for the Logging statements. However I ran into some cross-domain issues on an external development server, so I put it aside. The Flash Tracer plugin for Firefox would have been sweeeet, but I gave up trying to get it work in Firefox 3. Xray is a debugging behemoth. I didn’t quit like having to include a connector component to my SWF. All these debuggers are pretty darn good, but they all involved some twisted procedures to get them up and running. I then stumbled across a super simple answer to my browser debugging issue. Why not just do what the Javascript guys do? Trace it out to Firebug like this:

ExternalInterface.call("console.log","test");

It’s so simple it can’t be wrong. There is just an issue that I have to decide if I want to use Flash’s built in trace function or the Firebug log while debugging. This however is taken care of buy Thunderbolt. It is a simple class that notices if Firebug is accessible and otherwise uses trace. Thunderbolt also has a "hide" option built in, for when the SWF goes live.

Conclusion

The Firebug / Thunderbolt combo is an elegant way to debug Flash content in both the Flash IDE and in Firefox. For a quick introduction to Thunderbolt, check out the Article 10 tips and tricks using ThunderBolt AS3, by Thunderbolt’s author Jens Krause.

Comments

August 8th, 2008
Comment by Nicolas
I have been using the method of sending output to Firebug for long enough to notice it’s shortcomings. One is that the unused Debugger code stays inside the SWF (even when disabled), and the other is that it only works inside Firefox with Firebug.
I made another attempt to get the Flash Tracer plugin from Sephiroth to work and I was successful (turns out my User Settings folder at work is saved on the 486 down the hall). With a few tweeks to the mm.cfg file I even get warnings about Security issues:
```
ErrorReportingEnable=1
TraceOutputFileEnable=1
PolicyFileLog=1
PolicyFileLogAppend=1
```
Apart from the dreadfully slow performance, I now believe this is the simplest way to debug a Flash App from within the browser.
February 7th, 2010 at 8pm
Comment by Laurent
Hi, thanks for your 1001 ways. I just wrote the 1002nd way to debug flash. It is an Air 2 app for windows. Zero config, nice colorful output, the works. Let me know what you think: http://www.flexr.org/?p=159
February 7th, 2010 at 10:25pm
Comment by Nicolas
Hi Laurent, I have been using Flashbug for a while now. Thanks for your link, I’ll give your tool a spin next time I’m running Windows.

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