Debugging Flash in a Web browser creates all sorts of issues and clever solutions. Anywhere to having one Flash movie talk to another through LocalConnection, to a floating TextField or TextArea object or Movie containing such with a grabber and perhaps some buttons to using the difficult built in remote debugging built-in.
Adobe now has a Flash Debugger version. One of its features is outputting the trace function to a local file. A bit geeky on how to go about setting up that but it can be done. And so others have created solutions already.
One solution is FlashTracer. This is a Firefox plug-in that uses the Flash debugger version.
Once installed you will be seeing trace statements from the millions of Flash Movies on the Internet where the publishers failed to check “Omit trace actions” on their final publish.
But more so you can debug tricky client server Flash web apps quicker seeing your trace statements in a Window.
FlashTracer Version 2.0 download Note the Mozilla plug-in page has the older 1.3.1 1 version of FlashTracer.Flash Player Debug Version Download
The author is Alessandro Crugnola in case the links above get moved.
A good instructional site that covers installation and use is Flash PowerTools: FlashTracer for Firefox just be careful as the links here take you to the Firefox plug-in pages and that has the older 1.3.1 1 version of FlashTracer.
Just be careful as the links here take you to the Firefox plug-in pages and that has the older 1.3.1 1 version of FlashTracer. Other than the download links, follow the few short instructions here and you are good. The instructions do not cover the new features in 2.0 however but the product is relatively simple with just a few buttons and options.
After the plug-in installation, the instructions have you enter in a path that you modify to the location and name of the output file.
In my case the path was: C:\Documents and Settings\MyUserName\Application Data\Macromedia\Flash Player\Logs\flashlog.txt
You also can open this same output file in an editor like Dreamweaver or TextPad and use their search functionality. The file will update as you are using Flash movies in FireFox as well.