What Is Flash?
Flash is a powerful tool for creating anything
from simple animations to interactive applications and simulations.
It is also well suited for creating
user
interfaces for external
data and streaming media. Its support for creative expression and
practical programming, with a strong developer base, makes Flash an
appealing tool to work with. The Flash authoring environment is the
program in which you work to create Flash projects. You can use it
to create several file types. The first is an editable document
that contains your graphics and code for Flash. You create a Flash
document by choosing File, Save from the menu bar. When you first
save the file, giving it a
name
avoids the default filename of
untitled-#
. The
.fla
suffix is automatically
added to the filename of the new document. You should keep this
document in case you need it at a later time, as you most assuredly
will. It's known as a
source file
,
and is pronounced "eff el ay" or sometimes as "flah."
The published, compressed, ready-for-the-Web
document that you produce from your
.fla
document is
called a
.swf
file (pronounced "swiff"). This document
wraps the contents of your Flash document into a single package
that can be
played
either by a standalone Flash player or by any
browser that has the Flash Player plug-in installed. Create it from
the saved
.fla
file by choosing File, Publish Settings to
open
the Publish Settings dialog box, choosing
.swf
from
the Format tab, and then clicking the Publish button. The
.swf
is automatically published to the same directory as
the
.fla
file.
For a more advanced project, you might use an
ActionScript document (
.as
), which is an external (to the
.fla
document) text file that holds a set of ActionScript
code that can be included for use in the final published product.
An
.as
document is also known as a
source file
. Both
.fla
and
.as
files are known as source files because they can be
edited and are not part of the published result.
Before you dive into the details of everything
Flash has to offer, you need to know a few more common terms that
you will see throughout this section of the book. When a Flash file
is being used in the authoring environment, it's called
author-time
. When the published
.swf
file is running in a player, it is called
run-time
. Whenever I discuss file
size
or the importance of creating small files, I'm always
discussing the
.swf
file and not the
.fla
document. The
.swf
is the final compressed file that will
actually be downloaded and
processed
on the end user's
computer.
Now that you understand the basic areas of the
program, it's time to start exploring the many ways Flash can help
you
turn
out a powerful and dazzling product.
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