A client is using Adobe Animate for their projects. I find myself constantly stymied by stuff I would expect to find in a developers tool, that just isn't there. So frustrating. When I did flash and air programming while working at Adobe, I concentrated on using Flash Builder Pro 4.5. Things made sense there. Powerful editor. Stuff worked a lot like a top notch development environment, probably because it was based on Eclipse. I am really sad that Adobe has not updated it in a very long time.

Adobe Animate, on the other hand, yecccch…

Here is a list of problems as I search for them and encounter the “solutions”, or rather lack of solutions and ignoring excellent suggestions for years:

• What I am trying to do: Trying to see the list of objects in a layer. I would like to really easily browse their names too.
  • Google query: how to see the objects in a layer of animate
  • Answer found: Sorry animate can't show you the list of what is in a layer like so many other products can.
    • Example question asked by a user: Hello! New to Animate.
      • How can i see a list of objects and their order in a layer?
      • I can see this in any software (illustrator, after effects, c4d …,) but could not find it in Animate 😞
      • Example of it in Illustrator: (and a great picture of what it looks like in Animate)
      • Open question, and unaddressed feature, since at least September, 2019!
    • Found at: https://community.adobe.com/t5/animate/objects-on-a-layer-where-s-layer-panel/td-p/10631228
    • Possible work around: Click the no eye button and hide the other layers.
    • Now I see the one item on the layer I added. Why can't I double click it to inspect properties, see what kind of object it is, and such? Who knows. Frustrating.
• No refactoring support in the editor
  • this means no renaming either
• Somehow the debug console has gotten really wide, and the vertical drag border wont let me make it smaller. I had just docked the actions as a tab on the same pain as variables, when this happened. Having it floating was confusing. Undocking it let the variables window be narrowed again. Edit - Undo was unable to undo the docking…