Flex development workflow with free Flex SDK

My feet... are tickled by warm, sparkly water. I haven't spent the time to get them wet yet, but my appetite is certainly whetted!

I thought I'd share my workflow, since it's not clear to me whether or not the foss mxml editor is available for download at this time or not..

The tools:

• MXML Flex SDK (the command line compiler)
• EditPlus (great text editor)
• Command Line Interface (Dos Window)
  

Once Flex SDK is installed-- setting up Edit Plus to compile mxml:

1. In EP, go to Tools>>User Tools: Add Tool
2. Command (browse to mxmlc.exe)
3. Argument $(FilePath)
4. Initial directory "$(FileDir)"
   
1. note the double-quotes above.. If you're under "Program Files" and other such crummy directory names, you'll want quotes to encompass the path as a single argument
   
5. Check Capture Output

If this is your only User Tool, you can use CTRL-1 to execute compilation... if all goes well, check out the output panel at the bottom of EditPlus for progress.

The end result of compiled mxml is swf. Because you have the Flash 9 player installed (you do, don't you?), you can execute the compiled swf at the command prompt or by a dbl-click on the compiled file in explorer. I recommend the former, b/c you can do a simple Up Arrow to recall previous command, and voila, you've got your freshly compiled swf running!

If you know of a better way, please let me know. I realize this is a far cry from Flex Builder, so don't let me know that. :D