SWF Studio 3 released (finally!)

The long awaited release of SWF Studio 3.0 from Northcode is finally released!

This is an impressive product that let Flash developers create Windows applications easily (including screensavers, system tray tools…etc.) What is significant for ActionScript 2.0 developers is the new V3 ActionScript API – there is no need for the old and cumbersome FSCommand(); it’s all object-based events and callbacks.

The other cool new feature is JScript support. Instead of coding in ActionScript, developers can also code in JScript and access ActionScript API to do a lot more than what’s possible previously.

To create Flash-based standalone executables, I used to use Macromedia Director for most projects, but SWF Studio 3.0 is going to change that. Instead of embedding Flash files in Director, and using round-about ways to get things done (including using many 3rd-party Xtras), everything can be coded in ActionScript (or JScript) with this single tool. Of course, there are some powerful 3rd-party Xtras for Director that are not available in SWF Studio, but their included plug-ins should provide most developers with what they need.

With this release, NorthCode also developed a new Code Builder (which is built in SWF Studio). It is a GUI tool for building code using the new V3 API. There are also many examples that showcase this new tool. Be sure to check out the list of new features.