Review Your Task; Examine The Completed Application - MACROMEDIA FLASH 8-GETTING STARTED WITH FLASH Getting Started

Review your task

In this tutorial, you will create a type of application known as a flexible
messaging area, or FMA. An FMA is a common type of Flash application
used for displaying content that conveys some kind of informational or
marketing message to the audience. In this case, the FMA displays
photographs of items from the restaurant menu. At Macromedia's website,
an FMA is used to display information about new software products and
other advertising messages. These are called flexible messaging areas
because they usually occupy an area of the web page that is set aside for
content that can change depending on the needs of the business or website.
For example, if Café Townsend has a special event planned, the FMA
could change to display the details of that event instead of the restaurant's
menu items.
In this tutorial, after examining an existing Flash document, you'll begin by
creating a new Flash document and end by publishing the application for
web playback. The tutorial should take approximately 20 to 30 minutes
to complete.
Examine the completed
application
As you examine the finished version of an application you'll create, you will
also look at the Flash workspace.
In subsequent sections you'll follow the steps to create the application
yourself.
Run the completed application
To better understand the type of application you'll create as you work
through this tutorial, you can look at a completed FLA file version of the
application in the Flash authoring tool. FLA files are the files you work on
in Flash. You can also play the SWF version of the file in Flash Player. The
SWF version is the version of the file that you would publish in a web page.
136 Tutorial: Building a Video Player (Flash Professional only)