Understanding FlashPaper

The key to grasping FlashPaper's capabilities is to think of it as a printer that outputs Flash documents instead of paper. On the plus side, you can create a viewable representation of any file you can print; creating .swf files is now just as easy as choosing a different printer driver when printing. The "FlashPaper as printer" concept also implies a limitation, however: You can't convert an animated GIF to FlashPaper and expect it to animateyou'll see only the frame that would be printed.

To view Flash documents, you need Flash Player 6 or higher. The search functionality requires Flash Player 7 or greater.

Each Flash document is displayed within a consistent user interface, dominated by the toolbar atop the viewer. The toolbar includes the following controls by default:

• Pan. Grabs and moves the Flash document within the viewer.

• Select. Highlights text for copying to the Clipboard. Keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl+C on Windows and Command+C on Macintosh) must be used to copy. Only text is copied, even if an image is selected.

• Search. Finds the first occurrence of an entered word or phrase; if found, the term is highlighted. Click the magnifying glass icon to locate the next instance of the search term.

• Zoom. Controls the magnification of the document window. Although the Zoom slider goes from 25% to 250%, you can enter any value from 10% to 999% in the adjacent Zoom field.

• Fit in Viewer. Sets the zoom so an entire page is displayed in the viewer.

• Fit Width. Changes the magnification to show the document's full width in the viewer.

• Page Navigation. Moves the view of the document from one page to another and displays the total number of pages. Enter a value in the navigation field and press Enter (Return) to go directly to the specified page, or click the Next and Previous buttons to move one page at a time.

• Print. Sends the current Flash document to the system print utility.

• Open in New Browser. Displays just the Flash document in a new browser window.

In general, file sizes are pretty goodtypically at least 10% smaller than the equivalent PDF; the actual file size is entirely dependent on the degree of information output to the printer driver. The size of a document, however, doesn't reflect on apparent load time. The initial page of a Flash document appears as soon as the data for the viewer and that page have been transferredthe balance of the document loads in the background.

Flash documents for use in FlashPaper can be created in a variety of ways. On both Macintosh and Windows platforms, any application that offers printing provides access to the FlashPaper printer driver. Printing to the FlashPaper printer driver converts the current document to a Flash document. On Windows, FlashPaper additionally installs menus and toolbars in Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Windows users also see a shortcut to FlashPaper on their desktop; printable files can be dragged and dropped on the open application window in order to be converted and saved as either a Flash or PDF file.

Flash documents can also be embedded in other Flash documents, which allows Flash applications to call help files and other documentation in a standardized manner. You can even customize the FlashPaper interface somewhat. The general appearance remains the same, but you can specify initial magnification levels and the starting page. You can also display or hide a number of the controls, including the Search, Zoom, and Print options. The resulting Flash document can be inserted in either Dreamweaver or Contribute. This lesson demonstrates the use of a Dreamweaver extension that permits you to create just such a customized FlashPaper Viewer.

Note

The methodology for customizing and the available application programming interface (API) functions are described in the FlashPaper documentation, which is found in the FlashPaper window under Help > FlashPaper Help.