FlashLabWeb Experiments by Brian Wiltshire

De MonsterDebugger is an open source debugger for Adobe Flash, Flex and AIR. De MonsterDebugger is made in Flex and AIR by design studio De Monsters.

Some of the main benefits of using this monsterdebugger

Tree structure.

When De MonsterDebugger is connected with an application it will show the structure of the application and show it in a tree structure. This allows you to walk through your entire application and inspect every little detail if you like. When you click on an object that is on the stage at that time, it will highlight, showing a clear connection between the structure of your code and its visual representation.

With large applications the tree can become quite big, so to make sure that you can find exactly what you need you can filter the tree. And to make sure that your application does not slow down, only those elements of the tree that you open are loaded.

Live editing

will hopefully make your life a whole lot easier. We’re sure you know those days where you are finetuning an application, going back and forth from your application to your source code. Moving objects around by a couple of pixels, to get the right feel. This can be a very annoying process as you are waiting for your code to compile. With De MonsterDebugger this belongs to the past as you can change any public properties of any object and see the results straight away in the running application.

As long as the parameter is of one of the following types: String, Number, int, uint or Boolean you can change it using De MonsterDebugger.

Detailed traces

picks up traces where Flash stopped. Adding trace() calls to your code is the first form of debugging a flash project. As you add trace() calls to your code you map out a sort of breadcrumb through your code, getting feedback on what is going on. This works fine with Strings, Booleans, Numbers and ints, but not so well when it comes down to Arrays, XML and Objects. To display these data types you would have to write custom functions that break the data up in elements the trace() function can use. It might be good to know that we have done all this for you and integrated it in a very usefull way into De MonsterDebugger.

If you use De MonsterDebugger in any of your applications you can trace anything you want, simply by calling MonsterDebugger.trace() instead of the standard trace(). No matter what kind of data you are tracing, De MonsterDebugger finds out what it is and displays its content in an understandable way. So whether you want to trace an Object, an Array, an XML with Arrays and Objects or a custom Class, you can trace it using De MonsterDebugger. In addition to this you can assign a color to your trace. For example to distinguish between traces from different team members.

Method testing

is fast and easy when using De MonsterDebugger. If you have a (custom) method that takes either a String, Number, int or uint as a parameter, you can run it straight from De MonsterDebugger. If there are any results these get transferred to De MonsterDebugger straight away so there is no need for any additional traces.

By running methods straight from De MonsterDebugger you can bypass any additional actions that would be necessary for the application to run the method. For instance you do not have to navigate to a certain location in your application to interact with an Object to see whether your method works or not. Just locate the Object in the application tree and run the method from within De MonsterDebugger.

How it works.

There are a few simple steps that you have to take in order to start using De MonsterDebugger with your own applications.

First you need to have Adobe AIR installed.
After that you need to install De MonsterDebugger. Just open the download and AIR will do the rest.
Once De MonsterDebugger is up and running, you still need to import the client class to establish the connection with De MonsterDebugger.

The client class is embedded in De MonsterDebugger and can be saved to any location by selecting File > Export Client Class.

Save the folder in the root folder of your application.

Now all you need to do is import the class in your project. Flash and Flex examples are shown below.

Flash example:

package {

import flash.display.Sprite;
import nl.demonsters.debugger.MonsterDebugger;

public class Main extends Sprite {

// Variable to hold the debugger
private var debugger:MonsterDebugger;

public function Main() {

// Init the debugger
debugger = new MonsterDebugger(this);

// Send a simple trace
MonsterDebugger.trace(this, "Hello World!")
}
}
}


And Finally the main Features

* Can be used with Adobe AIR applications
* Can be used with Adobe Flex applications
* Can be used with full screen Adobe Flash applications
* Trace strings, numbers, objects, arrays, xml and even custom classes
* Trace the complete structure of multilevel objects
* Trace messages in custom colors
* Explore your live application
* Edit properties at runtime
* Run methods and get the results at runtime
* Application is lightweight
* Auto update
* De Monsters use De MonsterDebugger on a daily basis
* Look and feel of Adobe CS4
* Customizable interface
* Highlight display objects
* Client class included
* Example application included
* FDT templates included
* No need for the Adobe Flash debug player
* Works on Windows, Mac & Linux
* Open source (free)

Read more here