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203 FLASH, VIDEO & AUDIO
Whether you are creating an
animation or a media player in
Flash, the files you put on your
website are referred to as Flash
movies.
If you want to create your
own Flash movie, you need to
purchase the Flash authoring
environment from Adobe.
There are, however, several
companies that offer Flash
animations and slideshows,
as well as video and audio
players that you can use without
purchasing this tool.
When you create a Flash file in
the Flash authoring environment,
it is saved with the
.fla
file
extension. In order to use this file
on a web page it has to be saved
in a different format known
as SWF. (It has the
.swf
file
extension.)
When you export the movie
into SWF format, Flash creates
code that you can use to embed
the Flash movie in your page.
Traditionally, this code used the
HTML
<object>
and
<embed>
tags. However, now it is more
common to use JavaScript.
To view Flash, browsers need
to use a plugin (an extra piece
of software that runs in the
browser) called the Flash Player.
Statistics commonly indicate
that 98% of browsers on
desktop computers have the
Flash plugin installed. (The
percentage of mobiles and
tablets with it is much less.)
There is not space in this book
to teach you how to create Flash
movies (there are many books
devoted to that one topic), but
this chapter will show you how
to add Flash movies to your site.
Since the late 1990s, Flash has been a very
popular tool for creating animations, and later
for playing audio and video in websites.
how Flash works
The Flash authoring environment
is used to create Flash Movies.
The
.fla
file is exported to
.swf
format to use in a web page.
The
.swf
file is included in your
web page using JavaScript.
