Normally when debugging a flash application, you add trace statements to your code and run it from within flash and view the traces in the output window.
To be able to do the same from a standalone player or from the browser you will need a couple of tools that can be downloaded.
First you need to get a debugging version of your flash players. Go to http://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/downloads.html and scroll down to the version that you want. (I will use Flash palyer 9 for this example but the other versions should be similar.)
Find the section titled Adobe Flash Player 9 Update for Flash CS3 Professional
Download the zip file (42MB for the windows version.) This includes both the normal & debugger versions of the player including browser versions.
Extract the zip file to a convienent location on you computer and follow the instructions in the readme.html file. You may have to uninstall you old players first but the instructions are in the readme.html.
If you have Flash or Flex installed then you can replace the players folder in the flash or flex install location.
Once you have this installed and working, each time you browse to a page with flash on it or open an swf file on your hard drive, a file called flashlog.txt is created in
C:\Documents and Settings\user_name\Application Data\Macromedia\Flash Player\Logs
for Windows XP
or
C:\Users\user_name\AppData\Roaming\Macromedia\Flash Player\Logs
for later Windows versions
or
Users/user_name/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash Player/Logs/
for Mac
or
home/user_name/.macromedia/Flash_Player/Logs/
for Linux.
You used to be able to define where this file can be located but now it is fixed. For some reason Adobe has left it in Application Data\Macromedia instead of Application Data\Adobe. If you cannot find it then Google Flashlog.txt location. There is lots of info about the subject.
You will possible have to create a file called mm.cfg On most platforms this file goes in your home directory. http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/201/html/wwhelp/wwhimpl/common/html/wwhelp.htm?context=LiveDocs_Book_Parts&file=logging_125_04.html has all the settings that can be used.
To be able to view the file in real time in Windows, get mtail from here http://ophilipp.free.fr/op_tail.htm
To use it start mtail.exe and click on the folder icon to browse for & select flashlog.txt
If you cannot see the file then you may have to start the player first as th log file is automatically generated or refreshed when the player starts.
Then click Start and you should see all of your traces. The debug player also spits out a lot of other information as well when it starts but most of this can be ignored.
In Linux you can use the standard tail command tail -f flashlog.txt.
Not sure about Mac, maybe a Mac user could enlighten us.
A word of warning, The debug player will read traces & debug info from any swf that has tracing enabled. You will be surprised what you see when you are just browsing normally.
When you have finished debugging your code it is a good idea to publish another copy of the swf with trace disabled for the production environment.
Enjoy…
Roger.
