I’ve been doing a lot of research on feature priorities for the next release of Flash, BLAZE, and I’ve been seeing a lot of positive feedback on Grant Skinner’s gProject extension.

I decided to check it out and see what the hooplah was all about. Here’s a quick summary of the extension.

From the product page:

The gProject panel is a robust replacement for the (rather anaemic) project panel built into Flash MX 2004 and Flash 8 Professional. It incorporates a myriad of time-saving features in a tight, easy to use package.

Basically, gProject provides most of the key functionality that the built-in Project panel is missing.

Key features:
- Add all files in a given directory to the project automatically
- Access multiple projects from a drop-down menu
- Automatically open previous project on launch
- Right-click context menu on files
- Multi-mode “Test project” functionality
- Misc utility functions
- Assign keyboard shortcuts to gProject panel functionality
- Create new classes based on custom templates
- Unit testing

Read the full feature list here.

When I installed it and started playing around with it I was amazed at how rich the functionality was. I didn’t know the JSAPI provided such a deep level of access to the tool’s functionality.

My favorite feature is perhaps the simplest of the list, the ability to just point at a directory and have the project panel automatically addall of the files into the project. I’d like to do this in the Project Panel for the next release but I’m struggling with prioritizing Project Panel enhancements over all of the other great things we’re working on. Believe it or not, simple-sounding features like this take up a significant amount of time when you factor in QA testing, documentation, localization, UI work, etc, etc. That said, we may find a way to get it in there.

However, it is not likely that we’ll go to the full extent that Grant has done with gProject so - if you’re looking for rich functionality in the project panel, I’d recommend giving this extension a try.

Subscribe to the comments through RSS Feed