Flash Workflow

I posted these comments on FlashCoders, but I thought I'd share them here as well:

I hardly ever use the Flash IDE, unless it's to make a minor adjustment to something the designer did, or add an instance name. I've found it best to set up workflow where the artists do all the design in the IDE and then deliver the final FLAs and SWFs in an "Assets" folder. I build the application in FlashDevelop/MTASC and load in all the assets using the MovieClipLoader Class.

I centralize all code in .as files, but I also allow the designers to put their own code in their FLAs if they want to. Usually they can do this without stepping on my toes. This is the beauty of Flash. In some cases, their FLA becomes a prototype, and I'll end up migrating their code into a Class, but other times that's not necessary.

I've avoided Compnonents (with a capital C) because they're too difficult to customize, though I expect Flex will change my opinion on this. However, everything I build tries to be very modular or component-like.

The other thing I've found extremely useful is to put global settings that a designer might want to tweak in some kind of external file, usually XML. For example, timing info for animation. This way, they can tweak variables without having to recompile the App. in MTASC.