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When you have finished authoring your Flash document, you publish it
using the File > Publish command. This creates a compressed version of
your file with the extension .swf (SWF). You can then use Flash Player to
play the SWF file in a web browser or as a stand-alone application. For an
introduction to Flash Player, see
"About Flash Player" on page
17.
What you can do with Flash
With the wide array of features in Flash, you can create many types of
applications. The following are some examples of the kinds of applications
Flash can generate:
Animations
These include banner ads, online greeting cards, cartoons,
and so on. Many other types of Flash applications include animation
elements as well.
Games
Many games are built with Flash. Games usually combine the
animation capabilities of Flash with the logic capabilities of ActionScript.
User interfaces
Many website designers use Flash to design user
interfaces. The interfaces include simple navigation bars as well as much
more complex interfaces. You can find an example of a navigation bar
created with Flash across the top of the
www.macromedia.com
home page.
Flexible messaging areas
These are areas in web pages that designers
use for displaying information that may change over time. A flexible
messaging area (FMA) on a restaurant website might display information
about each day's menu specials. You can find an example of an FMA on the
www.macromedia.com
home page. The tutorial in
"Tutorial: Building
Your First Flash Application" on page 95
guides you through the process of
building an FMA.
Rich Internet applications
These include a wide spectrum of
applications that provide a rich user interface for displaying and
manipulating remotely stored data over the Internet. A rich Internet
application could be a calendar application, a price-finding application, a
shopping catalog, an education and testing application, or any other
application that presents remote data with a graphically rich interface.
You can find many examples of real projects created by Flash users on the
Macromedia website at www.macromedia.com/cfusion/showcase/.
What you can do with Flash
7
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