Chapter 15: Publishing - MACROMEDIA FLASH MX 2004-USING FLASH Use Manual

CHAPTER 15
Publishing
When you're ready to deliver Macromedia Flash MX 2004 and Macromedia Flash MX
Professional 2004 content to an audience, you can publish it for playback. By default, the Publish
command creates a Flash SWF file and an HTML document that inserts your Flash content in a
browser window. The Publish command also creates and copies detection files for Flash 4 and
later. If you change publish settings, Flash saves the changes with the document. You can create
publish profiles to name and save various configurations for the Publish Settings dialog box, in
order to quickly publish documents a variety of ways. After you create a publish profile, you can
export it for use in other documents, or for use by others working on the same project. For more
information, see "Using publish profiles" on page 327.
If you're publishing content that targets Macromedia Flash Player 4 or later, you can implement
Flash Player detection, which checks your user's version of Flash Player. If the user doesn't have
the specified version, you can direct the user to an alternate web page. For more information, see
"Configuring publish settings for Flash Player detection" on page 318
Flash Player 6 and later supports Unicode text encoding. With Unicode support, users can view
multilanguage text, regardless of the language used by the operating system running the player.
For more information, see Chapter 13, "Creating Multilanguage Text," on page 235.
You can also publish the FLA file in alternative file formats—GIF, JPEG, PNG, and
QuickTime—with the HTML needed to display them in the browser window. Alternative
formats allow a browser to show your SWF file animation and interactivity for users who don't
have the targeted Flash Player installed. When you publish a Flash document (FLA file) in
alternative file formats, the settings for each file format are stored with the FLA file.
You can also export the FLA file in several formats. Exporting FLA files is similar to publishing
FLA files in alternative file formats, except that the settings for each file format are not stored with
the FLA file. For more information, see Chapter 16, "Exporting," on page 345.
As an alternative to using the Publish command, if you're proficient in HTML, you can create a
custom HTML document with any HTML editor and include the tags required to display a SWF
file. For more information, see "About configuring a web server for Flash" on page 343.
Before you publish your SWF file, it's important to test how the SWF file works using the Test
Movie and Test Scene commands.
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