11.5 The Exported Flash Movie (.swf file)

Our application is now ready for testing and ” assuming all goes well ”deployment. To specify the directory in which to create AppName.swf , follow these steps:

1. With AppName.fla open , choose File Publish Settings Formats.

2. Click OK.

3. To test our application in the Flash authoring tool's Test Movie mode, select Control Test Movie. Testing a movie actually creates AppName.swf in the AppName /deploy directory and immediately loads it into a debugging version of the Flash Player.

For our application, we'll export to Flash Player 7 format (the default in Flash MX 2004), but you could also export to Flash Player 6 format if you expect your visitors to be using that version of the Flash Player. For information on setting the movie format and ActionScript version, see "ActionScript 1.0 and 2.0 in Flash Player 6 and 7" in Chapter 1.

If your application is working, you should see the following appear in the Output panel:

 Starting application. An instance of class B was constructed. 

If the preceding messages don't appear in the Output panel, try comparing your source files to the ones posted at http:// moock .org/eas2/examples.

When everything works in Test Movie mode, publish an HTML page that includes the movie, ready for posting to a web site as follows :

1. With AppName.fla open, choose File Publish Settings Formats.

2. Click Publish.

3. Click OK.

4. Test locally by opening AppName.html in your web browser.

5. When the local testing proves successful, upload the .html and .swf files to your web server.

6. Test in your browser from the remote site by browsing to the URL where you uploaded the .html file. Note that the package location and author-time folder structure do not matter once you upload your files to the server. Packages and classpaths matter only at compile time. Furthermore, you can upload the .html and .swf wherever you like on your server, but in our example, the two files must reside in the same web server folder.

It's a good idea to test in all supported versions of the Flash Player in all target web browsers on all target platforms throughout the lifetime of a project. If you wait until the end of the project to test in various browsers, you might discover serious problems that would have been easier to fix if they had been caught earlier.

For detailed information on exporting and publishing Flash movies, see Help Using Flash Publishing.