Flash CS5: The Missing Manual

Publishing Your Animations

When you Publish your animation, Flash Professional reads the images and sounds in your .fla file, applies compression according to the settings you chose, and then writes a noneditable file (.swf) that your audience will view in Flash Player.

The kind of noneditable file Flash produces depends on how you decide to publish your animation. These are your choices:

• A compiled Flash file (.swf). Flash Players, including the Flash Player plug-ins that come with most browsers, play .swf files. If you plan to include your Flash animation in a hand-coded HTML file (or to import it into a website creation program like Adobe Dreamweaver), you want this option.

• A web page (.html, .swf). Choose this option if you want Flash to put together a simple web page for you that includes your animation. (You can always tweak the HTML file later, either by hand or using a web design program like Dreamweaver.)

• An image file (.jpg, .gif, or .png). You can export an individual frame, or if you use the GIF format, you can export a series of image files that play as a frame-by-frame animation—useful for those times when your audience doesn't have Flash Player. (For more advice on using ActionScript to detect your audience's Flash Player at runtime and offer alternatives, see the box on The Problem with Detecting Your Audience's Flash Version.)

Note

Flash gives you another way to turn your artwork into an image file: by exporting it (Exporting Flash to Other Formats).

• A standalone projector ...