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Publishing a Flash Movie

Free Flash Tutorial

There is no point in being able to create great Flash Movies if you cannot Publish the Movie to the web! This tutorial looks at the group of files that is created as Part of the Publishing process and goes through the steps that you need to know in order to get your Flash movie onto a web page or into other formats.

Publishing Files

A completed Flash movie usually has several parts:

The first is the Flash Movie that you create in Flash. This is the file that you create, edit and save:

The Flash file: myMovie.fla

The second part is the Shockwave file which you upload to the Internet and that the viewer looks at. This is much smaller than the Flash file and cannot be edited only viewed.

The Shockwave file: myMovie.swf

Normally there is also a web page in which the Shockwave file is placed. This is normally a standard HTML web page.

The web page: myMovie.html

Another useful part of a publication is a text file which contains a size report:

The Report: myMovie Report.txt

Note: There are also many other files which can make up the publication group. The above are the most often used.

File Extensions

To be able to tell the files apart look at the file extensions (the code at the end of the file name). On many computers you cannot see this. When you are using Flash it is much better to change the system settings for the computer so that the file extension are visible:

PC's:

1. On a PC you can switch the file extension on by going to: My Computer > Tools > Folder Options > View
   (Win 95/98: My Computer > View > Folder Options > View )
2. Scroll down and remove the tick from: Hide extensions for known file types
3. Click: ok

MAC's:

Switch to Finder > Preferences > Advanced > Tick: Show all File Extensions

Icons

Even if you cannot see the file extension the Icons look different: