Today we reach the bottom of my dock with Flash Builder, two stacks, and the good old trash can, an item with an even longer legacy than Finder.

Flash Builder

Flash is a great platform for animation, interaction, and games. Video playback certainly makes it popular. Yes, its online ubiquity coupled with its hot running profile make it a bit of a menace. However, I think Apple’s real reason for banning Adobe AIR Packager for iPhone is that Flash provides a better development platform than Apple.

Flash Builder 4 (previously Flex Builder) is the current iteration of Adobe’s Eclipse-based Flash IDE. I works. I don’t have any complaints right now — probably an indication that I haven’t been using it recently. As such, I only have a few helpful setup notes:

• Find the Flex framework and other source code in /Applications/Adobe\ Flash\ Builder\ 4/sdks/4.1.0/frameworks/projects.
• Download the Full Flex 4 Documentation Set. Always good to have an offline copy.
• When you value fluid writing over i-dotted-t-crossed completeness use these compile flags:
  • -warn-no-type-decl=false -warn-missing-namespace-decl=false.

Stacks

Stacks haven’t been part of my workflow in the past. New laptop, new habits, let’s give them a try:

• Recent Documents
  • defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-others -array-add '{ "tile-data" = { "list-type" = 1; }; "tile-type" = "recents-tile"; }' adds a recent items stack. You can configure it to show applications, documents, servers, weird stuff. I’m happy with documents.
• I have a directory with text files that keep track of the projects I’m working on. Though the files usually just stay open. It may prove nice to have the directory nearby.

Trash Can

What an odd and antiquated feature: desktop metaphor! Just keep my stuff forever or let me shred it if I fear it falling into the wrong hands. And what’s the deal with moving volumes to the trash to eject them? I don’t want it thrown away. I just want it out.

Next Time?

I’ll briefly cover other noteworthy apps that don’t live on my dock.