12 Tips to Use Adobe Flex Builder Better

Adobe Flex Builder is a powerful IDE to quickly develop your Rich Internet Application (RIA). The following are 12 tips to further improve your productivity. Because Flex Builder is built on Eclipse platform, you will find most of them applied to Eclipse as well.

1. Get the code hint in the editor view

Press CTRL + SPACE

2. View help for a component or class

Highlight the code and press F1

3. Expand/Restore the editor

Double click the tab on top

4. Locate a close curly bracket

Move cursor to the open curly bracket and press CTRL + SHIFT + P

5. Open a class file by its name

Hold the CTRL key and click the class name.

6. Quickly locate a code element inside the editor view

Press CTRL + O to open an outline dialog, and then click the element name.

7. Highlight all occurrences of a component inside the editor view

Click a component name and click  button (Mark Occurrences) on the tool bar.

8. Compare your code with the local history

Right click a file name in the navigator panel and choose “Compare With -> Local History”.

9. Fold a block of code to save space inside editor view

Click the icon besides the line number on the left of the editor view

10. Comment out a block of code quickly

Highlight a block of code and press CTRL + SHIFT + C.

11. Move a block of code up or down

Highlight a block of code and press ALT + UP or ALT + DOWN.

12. Run or Debug your application

Press CTRL + F11 or F11