Web Design in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

File Formats

The Flash authoring tool saves information about a movie in a .fla source file (also called a “Flash document” or “Flash editor document”). The .fla file contains all the separate elements that make up the movie and its timeline information in a fully editable format.

When the movie is ready to go on the Web, it must be exported to .swf format. The suffix originally stood for Shockwave Flash, but in the face of confusion with Macromedia’s Shockwave for Director format, the meaning is more accurately understood as simply a compiled Flash application.