Flash IDE Recommendations?

What are people using for authoring their Flash games besides the full Adobe application? I’m down to 9 days on my CS4 demo, and while I like it quite a bit, I can’t see paying $500+ to keep using it.

The FlashDevelop freeware looks interesting, but I’m still getting used to Flash and the visual presentation of Adobe’s suite is quite helpful.

I see marked down copies of Macromedia Flash Professional 8 online. Since I’m still just using AS2 would that be enough to keep making workable games?

Thanks for any advice people can give.

There’s nothing wrong with Flash 8 if you’re using AS2. Unless you’re used to some of the new features in CS4, it shouldn’t be too big a jump.

Yeah, most (if not all) of the upgrades from Flash 8 to CS4 are either aesthetic or for AS3. I do like the look of CS4 though :P I like having the Actions panel on one monitor and the main part on the other – can’t quite remember if that was available in Flash 8…

You can do that in 8.

Wow, this topic just single handedly made me immensely want to buy a 2nd monitor…