Save / Export

While you’re in the process of developing your Flash animations for the Web or desktop, you’ll actually create them inside the Macromedia Flash authoring environment. At this point, the file is an FLA file, viewable only inside of Flash. When you save your Flash file, by going to File > Save (Ctrl+S), you save a .fla file which saves all of your working information. If you need to go back into a project and make a slight adjustment you would re-open your .fla file, make the necessary adjustments, export the Web ready file (.swf) and save your working file again.

So, when you’re ready to put your movie on the Web, you must publish (File > Publish) or export (File > Export > Export Movie) the file as an SWF file, the format that can be viewed by the free Flash Player and standalone Flash Player.

In addition to the SWF format, you can also publish your movie as a Macromedia Generator Template (SWT), GIF Image, JPEG Image, PNG Image, Windows Projector, Macintosh Projector, QuickTime Movie, Real Player Movie and many more. Some of these formats, however, do not maintain the interactive and multimedia capabilities of the Flash movie (no sound, buttons won’t work, movie clips don’t play properly). All of these formats are listed in the Publish Settings (File > Publish Settings).

• You can then place the Shockwave file in an HTML document with either Dreamweaver, Flash Publish command or by creating the HTML document yourself.
• Flash allows you to export the current frame into a still image.