SapphireSteel Software’s Amethyst Professional is a new IDE which provides Microsoft Visual Studio users with a powerful development environment for the Flash Platform. Amethyst has a visual drag-and-drop designer for Flex 3, Flex 4 and AIR. The designer integrates with ActionScript and MXML code editors which support code refactoring, IntelliSense, auto-expanding snippets (code templates) and customizable code formatting. Amethyst has a unique multi-process ‘Cylon’ debugger which is able to debug into multiple SWFs simultaneously. The Cylon debugger has both simple and conditional breakpoints and allows the programmer to drill-down into complex objects by hovering over identifiers in the code editor. Amethyst Professional costs $249 and a 60-day trial version is available. After the trial period, the software degrades to the free Personal Edition unless a license is purchased. Amethyst Personal Edition supports editing and debugging but lacks high-end features such as the visual designer and refactoring.

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