Neoswiff, could it be exactly what a C# developer needs when tasked with producing a Flash application? Maybe, but not without that 99% perspiration Thomas Edison mentioned.

Neoswiff, as marketed on their website, "allows developers to write Flash™ applications in C#." Sounds pretty simple. The idea driving Neoswiff is the ability to compile C# code and create a Flash swiff file (*.swf). All that is required in order to run the application is a flash player, and most clients have these today.

Neoswiff is currently a beta and worth downloading, installing, and discovering for oneself. They provide a Visual Studio .NET 2003 plug-in, and stand-alone C#-to-SWF compiler with its own IDE. I downloaded both, and prefer the latter. The VS .NET 2003 plug-in crashed the VS IDE every time, specifically when declaring the "this" keyword to reference a specific instance of a class, even in sample files that already contain the "this" keyword. I recommend installing the stand-alone IDE provided by Neoswiff.

The stand-alone IDE looks quite similar to VS .NET and inherits some basic functionality. One disadvantage is the creation of a gui is missing. When creating a new label, button, or other control, one must determine programmatically where to place the control using something like, "this.myControl.location = new System.Drawing.Point(50,50);" There appears to be no designer at this point.

Will Neoswiff replace my need to use the Macromedia Flash IDE? No way, but that is not its purpose. Can I create basic applications in C# and compile them into a SWF file? Yes, but not without rolling up the sleeves and skipping lunch.

I am definitely interested in where Neoswiff is going and will stay tuned to see how the beta progresses. I hope they can iron out the IDE to make development much easier.