Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
delivering interactive animations for display on the Web. Over time, Flash development
has continued. The latest version of Flash also contains video-handling capabilities, is
better at compressing bitmap-based animation, has more developed coding capabili-
ties, and includes excellent audio capabilities. Flash is a good choice for lightweight
interactive components (such as an address book or an animated menu system), Web
applications, slide show-type presentations, vector-based animation, some bitmap-based
animation, video, video that has additional animation or text laid over it, and sound.
Flash is both the name of the software you use to create animations and the name
commonly used to refer to the completed animation fi les. Flash fi les are also called Flash
movies. The types of Flash fi les that you will see most frequently are:
• .fl a. The source fi le used by the Flash program when you create a Flash movie. You edit
.fl a fi les when you want to make changes to Flash movies. These authoring fi les can be
opened only in the Flash program. The fi les must be exported from Flash as .swf fi les to
be viewed on the Web.
• .swf. A compressed Flash fi le that is viewable in a browser and can be previewed in
Dreamweaver. You'll use .swf Flash fi les in the NextBest Fest site.
• .swt. A Flash template fi le that enables you to change and replace content in the .swf
fi le. In Dreamweaver, these fi les are used with the Flash button objects to enable you
to update text when you add buttons to a page.
• .swc. A compiled clip that you work with in Flash that contains Flash symbols and
ActionScript code. The components included with Flash are .swc fi les that enable you
to incorporate mostly prebuilt Web components into pages. Like .fl a fi les, these author-
ing fi les must be exported from Flash as .swf fi les to be viewed on the Web.
• .fl v. The Flash video fi le format that enables you to include encoded audio and video
for delivery through the Flash Player.
Like every program, there are both positive and negative aspects of using Flash.
Figure 7-11 lists these benefi ts and drawbacks.
Figure 7-11
Pros and cons of using Flash
Pros
Cons
As of December 2009, 99 percent of Internet-
enabled desktops in mature markets as well as
a wide range of devices have the Flash Player
plug-in (it has a 99 percent browser penetration).
Flash Player 10 has 94.7 percent penetration as
of December 2009.
The playback speed of a Flash movie might
depend on the client computer because older ver-
sions of Flash render the movies on the client com-
puter. The newer version of Flash has an option
to prerender certain types of frames, which might
eliminate this problem.
A Flash movie will look the same in all browsers
and across platforms.
There are limitations to the amount of interactivity
and control you can achieve with Flash.
Flash compresses movies to a reasonable size.
Although Flash has 99 percent browser penetra-
tion, not all users have the latest version, and
problems sometimes arise in playback due to ver-
sion differences. (This is usually overcome because
the Flash movie checks to see which version the
user has and prompts the user to download the
current version, if necessary.)
You can use any font within a Flash movie
because Flash is not dependent on the fonts on
users' computers.
Many alternative and portable devices, such as
cell phones, PDAs, wireless handsets, and inter-
active television systems, can play Flash movies.
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