FlashHunter is a neat Eclipse plug-in I wrote that allows you to kill all running Flash player instances with a single click. Two days ago I was implementing the fast Fourier transformation in Flash and I had a stupid error that caused an endless loop. Since I am testing with the standalone player the only way to get rid of it was Ctrl+Alt+Del and killing it. This is not really a nice workflow so I wrote the plug-in.
I am not a Java developer and definitly not an Eclpise platform developer so the plugin itself is very basic. I experimented a little bit with JNI and wrote most of the plugin in C++ because it still is my language of choice.
The plugin is Windows only. I think you could also do something like that as an external tool for OS X (“killall Flash\ Player”).
15 Comments
Dude!
Thats make the Eclipse Workflow much better!
I hate it when it can’t compile … arrgh.
You have also to implement a kill functionality for the flash debugging sessions, fdb.exe(?).
There are also occuring some errors while compiling, i.e. it doesnt refresh my sources sometimes and compiles the old things….
Cheers Dominic
Hi Dominic,
I already implemented it for me. I will post the updated version soon. It is actually more important to me than just killing the Flash player because the fdb will stay open if you launch it more than one time and close each player manually. Now all are gone with one click.
I use SlickRun, a nifty launcher for Windows, in which I type simple keywords and it lanuches programs or does entire sequences of actions at once.
Upon reading this tip of yours, I added a keyword ‘kill’, which accepts inline parameters to the ‘tskill’ prompt command.
That way, whenever an application freezes, or a test goes into an infinite loop, I can type Windows + Q (the SlickRun shortcut) and then ‘kill ProcessName’.
It’s a hell of a lot easier then Ctrl + Alt + Del, selecting each instance to be killed, then killing it.
Thanks for the inspiring post : )
Maybe I am missing something here, but the flexbuilder eclipse plugin already had this functionality. I suppose learning to develop a eclipse plugin was more the point, and I suppose it wasn’t for a real project.
Err… that was not a serious comment was it?
hmm insulting, that is quite mature. yes it was a serious comment.
I am sorry if you feel insulted but from what you are saying is sounds like you do not not quite understand what the plug-in does.
Besides that I am not using FlexBuilder. Albeit that I do not think it has that functionality (only that standard red-square thing).
But you understood correct that it was more an experiment. Just like the post says. It could have been done with setting up an external tool and using common Windows commands (like it says at the end of the post for OS X users).
Cheers
no worries, i just find in my experience that those who insult, usually are those who think or pretend they know more than others. I hope this is not the case…
Please stick to the facts if you want to discuss something.
I am still interested if that button exists in FlexBuilder for instance.
Well, the “red x” in Flexbuilder is not what you did here, Joa. If I understand you correctly, “your X” will close all Flashplayer instances running in the OS. Flexbuilders’ “X” will cose only the player instance (or html/player if that is selcetd in project settings) that is connected to the Flex debugger. So it works exactly like the “red X” in Eclipses’ default Java editor.
Hope that wasn’t insulting to anybody. It may, however, be insulting to say that I would certainly like to beat some of you guys on the kicker table again ;-)
Sorry , where is Fast Fourier transform for AS3 in you library?
Hobnox Open Source? Our FFT is not part of the Open Source SDK.
Hi Joa, I’m using flashhunter day by day, so i think the time has come to say thank you for this great plugin.
Just a minor drawback, i noticed, as you announced in the readme, that it isn’t properly running on my new windows7 64bit machine. So if you have time to fix it, you can count on me as your private beta tester ;)
That’s the error message i got: “Error: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError : Could not initialize class de.popforge.FlashHunterLib”
If you need futher infos, you can send me a mail, too.
Fabian, I tested the plug-in on an Vista 64bit machine I think a long time ago. Did you try the FlashHunter Deluxe version? That one is written using CLR and should work with Windows7 64bit as well.
FlashHunder Deluxe is even more user friendly since you get a system-wide shortcut you can define. Like Win+Shift+X to close all Flash Player instances plus debugger.
Your right the Deluxe version works quite well on my system.
Wondering, why i didn’t tried it earlier ;)
Thanks for your feedback and happy coding.
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[...] FlashHunter has been used by actually one person: Michael Baczynski. He asked me at the FFK08 in Germany if I could modify the plugin to give him a global keyboard hook which will kill all instances of the Flash Player including the debugger. [...]