John Grden has made a very nice debugger for Flash called AdminTools. Basically, it uses a connector in the debugged movie and an external swf, in conjunction with LocalConnection, to create a link between your movie and a controller. Now the great thing is that you can list movieclips and objects and modify properties and variables on the fly. The first time you’ll try it out and modify a clip’s _x value from another window, you’ll certainly say it’s darn cool.

I’ve recently had to update the script on moviestimeline.com from AS1 to AS2, a hard task considering it was a single 1500 lines long actionscript file that drove the whole movie. The AdminTools proved invaluable, allowing me to pinpoint when movieclips weren’t being created, easily seeing the locations of everything on screen. It also comes with it’s own remote trace window, although I still use NetDebug.trace after spending way too much time with Remoting ;)

You can download it here. If you download and use the tool, don’t forget to thank John and join the mailing list to contribute comments/suggestions/bugs.

Usage:

• Download the debugger for your platform and the connector. Install the connector.
• Place a connector instance in your movie
• Test your movie and open the debugger
• You can move the window by right clicking it and dragging
• To trace all of the movieclips in the movie, make sure _level0 is selected in the top combobox and click on the left button that looks like a globe with an arrow around it. Next click tree view. You should see all of your movie clips
• You can click on a movieclip and the property inspector will allow you to change every property of that clip, like _x, _visible, useHandCursor, etc.