Introduction to External Communications

     

A Flash movie is capable of two basic types of external communications: local and network-aware . By "local" communication, I mean methods of communication that work only within the boundaries of a single computer. This primarily means communicating with the environment in which the movie is running. Movies typically run either in the Flash Player in a browser, or else as a stand-alone projector (a self-contained executable application). Which you generate depends on whether you choose to output as a Flash movie (SWF) or a projector in the Publish Settings dialog (File, Publish Settings).

By "network-aware" communication, I mean methods of communication that can reach outside a single computer through the use of network protocols, such as HTTP. That most importantly means communicating with servers, such as Web servers. However, the same techniques that are used, for instance, to download files from Web servers, can also be used to "download" files from the file system on the computer where the movie is running.