How to debug Flash / Flex in two browsers?

Question

I have a Flex 4 application that connects to an ASP.NET FluorineFx based web service. It is authenticated by cookie via RemoteObject.setCreadentials()

Both applications connect to the FMS server and talk to each other through a direct RTMFP (P2P) connection.

I want to debug both instances of this application in Firefox and Internet Explorer at a time with one click (F11).

Now I can debug in only one browser by running Debug in Flash Builder 4. I created a double browser with the bat file registered as the default browser in Preferences > General > Web browser , which looks like this:

 start "IE" /b "c:\Program Files (x86)\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe" -private %1 start "FF" /b "c:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -private %1 

But this only binds the debugger to the first launch of the application instance in Internet Explorer.

How to connect and debug both instances?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Ok, solution found. It doesn’t work exactly with one click, but two clicks, but it’s better than changing the default browser twice for each debugging session.

Put this code in bat or cmd file and set it as default browser ( Preferences > General > Web browser , New... )

 @echo off IF EXIST ff.lock GOTO runie IF NOT EXIST ff.lock GOTO runff :runie START "IE" /b "c:\Program Files (x86)\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe" -private %1 DEL ff.lock GOTO end :runff START "FF" /b "c:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -private %1 ECHO lock > ff.lock GOTO end :end 

... and double-click "Debug"! It launches two browsers and attaches a debugger to them!

Note. If you are using Windows Vista / 7 with UAC enabled, you may need to run Flash Builder as an administrator (so that the script file is written to the ff.lock file).

Answer 2

I have never tried, but I assume that you need to run the second instance of Flash Builder and attach the debugger to the second instance of the application. In this case, the article "FlexBuilder 3 Attach to Runing to Debug" may be useful.