Chapter 3: Creating And Managing Documents; Working With Flash Documents - Adobe 38039481 - Flash CS3 Professional User Manual

Chapter 3: Creating and managing
documents
When you create and save Adobe® Flash® CS3 Professional documents within the Flash authoring environment, the
documents are in FLA file format. To display a document in Adobe® Flash® Player, you must publish or export the
document as a SWF file.
You can add media assets to a Flash document and manage the assets in the library, and you can use the Movie
Explorer to view and organize all the elements in a Flash document. The Undo and Redo commands, the History
panel, and the Commands menu let you automate tasks in a document.

Working with Flash documents

About Flash files
In Flash you can work with a variety of file types, each of which has a separate purpose:
• FLA files, the primary files you work with in Flash, contain the basic media, timeline, and script information for
a Flash document. Media objects are the graphic, text, sound, and video objects that comprise the content of your
Flash document. The Timeline is where you tell Flash when specific media objects should appear on the Stage. You
can add ActionScript™ code to Flash documents to more finely control their behavior and to make them respond
to user interactions.
• SWF files, the compiled versions of FLA files, are the files you display in a web page. When you publish your FLA
file, Flash creates a SWF file.
• AS files are ActionScript files—you can use these to keep some or all of your ActionScript code outside of your
FLA files, which is helpful for code organization and for projects that have multiple people working on different
parts of the Flash content.
• SWC files contain the reusable Flash components. Each SWC file contains a compiled movie clip, ActionScript
code, and any other assets that the component requires.
• ASC files are files used to store ActionScript that will be executed on a computer running Flash Media Server.
These files provide the ability to implement server-side logic that works in conjunction with ActionScript in a
SWF file.
• JSFL files are JavaScript files that you can use to add new functionality to the Flash authoring tool.
• FLP files are Flash project files. You can use Flash projects to manage multiple document files in a single project.
Flash projects allow you to group multiple, related files together to create complex applications.
For video tutorials about working with Flash files, see the following:
•
www.adobe.com/go/vid0117
• www.adobe.com/go/vid0118
See also
"About the Timeline" on page 33
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