Creating Projectors

Projectors are self-sufficient applications for playing Flash content. To play a projector file, the end user double-clicks the projector icon. Projectors are an excellent way to distribute movies directly to people; for example, you can e-mail a Flash-animated greeting card to a friend. Projectors are platform-specific, but you can make projectors for both the Mac and Windows platform from either platform.

To create a projector

1.	Open the Flash document from which you want to publish a projector.
2.	Choose File > Publish Settings. The Publish Settings dialog appears; choose a new base publishing profile, or leave the current setting.
3.	In the Formats section (Figure 16.51), choose one of the following options: Windows Projector (.exe) creates a projector that runs in Windows. Macintosh Projector creates a projector that runs on a Mac. Figure 16.51. To create a stand-alone run-time version of your movie, choose Windows Projector or Macintosh Projector in the Formats tab of the Publish Settings dialog. You have no other options for formatting projectors.
4.	Click the Publish button. As it creates the projector files, Flash displays the Publishing dialog, which has a progress bar and a button for canceling the operation. Unless you choose a new location (via the file destination button), Flash places the projector files in the same location as the original Flash document. A projector has a distinctive icon (Figure 16.52). Figure 16.52. The projector is a stand-alone run-time file with a special icon. When you create a Windows projector on a Mac, the icon looks like an ActionScript file's icon. When you view the file on Windows, the circular Flash icon appears. Double-click the icon to launch the projector.

Playing Macintosh Projectors Created in Windows

When you publish a Macintosh projector on a computer running the Windows operating system, Flash gives the projector the extension .hqx. That extension indicates a file encoded in binhex format. Macintosh users need to translate the file by using a program such as BinHex or StuffIt Deluxe to play the projector on the Mac OS.