How to Produce and Use the Resulting Movie

Images of a Flash source file and a Flash executable file

The end product of Flash animations are called "Flash movies". When you create a movie in the Flash authoring environment and save this file, it is called the "source file", and has an extension (that is, on Windows, the last few characters after the dot in the name) named "FLA". For example, you will see several samples included with the distribution of type "FLA": sample.fla, myEffects.fla, etc. You can open these files only if you have the Flash authoring environment (Flash 8, Flash MX 2004, etc.).

Whenever you want to create the end result movie, you go through a process called "testing the movie", or "publishing the movie." This converts the source file into a file that you can distribute to others (and "Executable File", in the picture on the right). You "test the movie" by choosing the menu Control > Test Movie. Make sure to save your FLA first in place you know about, and then Flash will create the resulting movie in the same folder. The resulting file has an extension of "SWF", for example, sample.swf (produced by a sample.fla), myEffects.swf (produced by myEffects.fla), and so on.

You do not need to have the Flash authoring environment to view SWF files: you just need the free Flash browser plug-in (which is provided by default on most computers in the past few years). Typically, you will distribute both an HTML (web page) file with your SWF. In the Flash authoring environment, you can create the HTML page along with the SWF file by choosing the menu File > Publish. Flash will create an HTML page with the same name as your FLA file, along with an SWF file, but of course with an HTML extension instead of FLA or SWF.

Note: Flash can also produce other files such as PNG's, JPG's, etc. Look into File > Publish Settings... to see what Flash produces when you issue File > Publish.

If you just receive an SWF file, without an FLA or HTML, you can view the result by dragging and dropping it into a browser. If the Flash authoring environment is installed on your machine, you can even just double-click on the SWF file and it will play in its own window. If you just have an SWF file, you can view it but not modify it. To modify the movie, you must have access to the FLA file.

To embed your movie in PowerPoint, you will use the SWF file, not the FLA or HTML. Click here to go the page which describes what is necessary to do this.