Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
With every Flash project the best way to see how it is actually working is by
testing the movie.
This allows you to see the finished product and what an end-user would see.
There other ways of testing your movie
but this one is the most accurate in terms of how it will actually function.
Before I show you how to test the movie however
I need to show how this project is currently saved on this computer.
As you can see the flash file is saved in its own folder,
this is important because when you test the movie
it will create a swf file wherever the original file was saved.
Before we talk about the importance of the swf file,
let's first test the movie.
If we go back into Flash Professional
there's a couple of different ways that you can test it,
you can scrub the playhead to see the animation in action,
you can hit the return or enter key on your keyboard to see it play once through
what we have on the timeline, or
you can actually hit the period key
if you're back this way
and it'll go frame-by-frame
through the animation.
So this is a good way of kind of testing and seeing if things are working
but it doesn't accurately reflect
what the end user will see.
This one is actually gonna continue to loop
as long as they have the project or the window open,
but we don't see that when we test it here.
So let's go up to the control menu,
choose test movie, make sure in Flash Professional is checked,
and choose test.
The keyboard shortcut for this for a PC is Control Enter
and for a Mac it's Command Return.
When I click test it converts that flash file into a swf file and plays it in the
flash player.
Now we can see how it actually is going to function for the end user.
You can see that it constantly loops
as long as they have this window open.
So this is the best option you have for seeing what it actually is gonna look like
and how it's gonna function
as a whole.
I'll close this window
and come back to my original flash file
and you'll see that in addition to the flash file
we have created a swf file.
This swf file is important because if somebody doesn't own flash professional,
and it is kind of an expensive program so if they don't own it they can still
see what you were doing in your project with the swf file.
So I can double-click this and it will open up in the flash player, which is something
free it's a program that anybody can download for free on their computer and
most people are already have.
So if you're trying to send this to a client and they don't have the actual
Flash Professional program they can at least open this and see what you had
intended or what your progress is on a project.
In addition
let's say your sending this to somebody like an instructor for a class and they do
have Flash Professional but you used a custom font called Blade Runner which
is what I have here,
this custom font is probably not gonna be on their computer
so when they open Flash Professional
it's not gonna show up correctly
and that's why you want to send them the swf files as well because it takes that
project
on your computer
and bundles it all into a swf file so they can see what it originally looked like
on your computer and how you intended it to look
no matter how it does actually look in the Flash program on their computer.
So when you're sending these people it's a good idea to send both of these files
just in case.
We don't always assume that people have the flash program because again it is
quite an expensive program and is only for professional animators.