Flex Development on Linux Tip: Use Epiphany not Firefox

By James Ward | Published: September 12, 2007

I am usually on Linux when I develop Flex applications and I recently discovered a cool trick that makes development even easier. Use Epiphany as the browser you run / test your applications in instead of Firefox. Here’s a few reasons:
- If Epiphany crashes because your app goes crazy it doesn’t take your normal browser and all its sessions down with it.
- Epiphany uses inotify or a file watch and automatically refreshes when your application changes. It saves quite a bit of time to have the application already loaded before I can even switch to my browser.
- Flash works the same in Epiphany as it does in any other browser.

I hope others find this useful.

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  • Thomas

    Hi James,

    which IDE are you using to develop Flex App under Linux ?

  • http://starkravingfinkle.org/blog Mark Finkle

    You can run 2 instances of Firefox using different “profiles” so your development browser doesn’t hork you normal browser. See:

    http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Setting_up_extension_development_environment

    However, the inotify feature sounds pretty cool – maybe an idea for a Firefox extension :)

  • http://www.jamesward.org James Ward

    Thanks Mark. Good to know.

    Thomas – I use vim mostly. But I hear someone was able to get Flex Builder working on Linux.

    -James