Macromedia® Flash™ MX 2004 ActionScript: Training from the Source

Chapter 6. Creating and Manipulating Data

When you use Flash to create an application, you use the Text tool to enter information directly onto the stage. Text that you enter in this manner is said to be hard coded because it's permanent once the SWF file is published. If you want to alter data that's hard coded into your Flash application, you must edit the Flash source file—a cumbersome and unnecessary process because Flash lets you define areas where text can be displayed dynamically. Instead of being set when the SWF is published, dynamic data is processed and stored at run time (while the SWF file is running), which means you can change it as often as you want. Dynamic data can be user-supplied information, data loaded from another file, ...