Over the past several months I’ve put together some rather extensive AS2 class libraries for some ongoing Flash projects. I had noticed that many of the open source libraries available on the interwebs had snazzy html documentation. Putting together this kind of documentation is not only helpful for other people using the libraries (so that they don’t have to go digging through the code), but it comes in handy when the author (me, in this case) hasn’t touched the code for a while.

I’m a big believer in the open-source movement and many times I’ve been able to find an open source solution that does the trick as well or better than a packaged piece of software can. So I started searching under the assumption that I would eventually settle on an open-source solution. In the case of Actionscript documentation, I found my ideal solution in VisDoc. It was one of the few solutions that had a Graphical User Interface rather than using a command line. It produces a beautiful set of documentation files. It works for both AS2 and AS3 (and Java). The one downside is that it’s Mac only. It’s not open-source, but with a sticker price of $40, it’s well worth the time saved. If you’re still looking for open-source or you need an app for your Windows machine, OSFlash has a comprehensive list of open-source documentations tools for Actionscript.