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Chapter 13 Publishing Your Flash Files In This Chapter Reducing your movie s size for fast download Testing your Flash movies Saving your work as a Flash MX 2004 document Publishing Flash movies to SWF, HTML, and other formats Using Publish Profiles Posting your movie to your Web site Exporting movie and image files Creating movies that viewers can print Your Flash movie is done. Now you need to publish it in its final form most likely an .swf file that you can post on your Web site. In this chapter, we explain how to prepare a Flash movie for publishing and help you determine the ideal publish settings for your needs. We also discuss how to publish to other graphic file formats such as PNG, in case you want to create a non-Flash site or use your material in another program. We cover all the bases so that you can get your animation up and running. The filenames of Flash-published movies end with the .swf suffix. The letters SWF originally stood for Shockwave Flash, but Macromedia no longer uses that term for Flash-published movies, even though the letters remain the same. So, to follow the Macromedia usage, we refer to SWF files as Flash Player files, not Shockwave Flash files. Flash converts your movie data into a highly compact and efficient form in an SWF file so that your SWF file contains only the information needed for playback of your movies. In contrast, when you save your movies by choosing File.Save (or File.Save As), they are saved with the .fla suffix. They are saved in a format that can be read by the Flash 8 application, but not the Flash Player. The .fla file contains lots of information about layers, Library items, your video source files, and so on, which you need when you are creating your movies and which the Flash Player doesn t need.
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5. Choose the name of the source file from the drop-down list beneath the title bar of the Library panel. The Library panel now shows the contents of the library of the source movie. 6. Drag the linked object from its Library panel onto the Stage of your destination movie. Working with shared libraries requires that all the pieces be in the proper place at the same time. We suggest checking a movie that contains an object from a shared library to verify that the object is displayed properly. You can do so by going online and viewing it in your browser. 284 Part V: The Movie and the Web
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Using a shared library After you create a shared Library, you can use it from within a different movie by specifying its name and URL, or by dragging it into the destination movie. To use a shared Library by specifying its name and URL, follow these steps: 1. In the destination movie, choose Window.Library. The Library panel appears. 2. Select an object on the Library panel, right-click (Windows) or Control+click (Mac), and choose Linkage from the contextual menu that appears. The Linkage Properties dialog box appears. 3. In the Linkage Properties dialog box, select the Import for Runtime Sharing check box. 4. Type the name of the shared resource that you want into the Identifier text box (no spaces allowed). This name should be identical to the Identifier you assigned to the shared library you want to use. If the Identifier text box already has a name in it, ignore that name and type in the name of the shared library you want to use. 5. Enter the URL of the shared resource you want. 6. Click OK. The Linkage Properties dialog box closes. To use a runtime shared Library by dragging it into your destination movie, follow these steps: 1. Open your source movie. The source movie is the .swf file whose runtime shared Library you want to use. 2. Choose File.Open. The Open dialog box appears. 3. In the dialog box, navigate to your destination movie, select it, and click Open. The destination movie file opens. 4. If the Library panel isn t open, choose Window.Library. If necessary, click the collapse arrow on the Library panel title bar to expand it. The Library panel shows the library of the destination movie. Chapter 12: Putting It All Together 283
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1. With the Library panel open, select a symbol, sound, or bitmap from the Library panel. Then right-click (Windows) or Control+click (Mac) and choose Linkage from the contextual menu that appears. You can select any kind of symbol: a graphic symbol, button, movie clip symbol, or font symbol. The Linkage Properties dialog box appears. 2. In the Linkage Properties dialog box, select the Export for Runtime Sharing check box. 3. Type a name (no spaces allowed) for the symbol in the Identifier text box. 4. In the URL text box, enter the planned URL (location on the Web) of the .swf file containing the shared resource. 5. Click OK. The Linkage Properties dialog box closes. 6. Save the file. 7. Publish the file as an .swf file. See Chapter 13 for instructions on publishing files. 8. Upload the file to your Web site to the location that you specified in Step 4. In Step 3, you give the shared Library a name; and in Step 4, you give the shared library an address. The next section describes how you can use this name and address to link to the shared library from within a different movie. To share a font, you first have to create a font symbol, but that s easy. To create a font symbol, follow these steps: 1. Choose Window.Library to open the Library panel. 2. Click the Options menu in the upper-right corner of the Library panel and then choose New Font. The Font Symbol Properties dialog box appears. 3. Select a font from the Font menu in the dialog box. Alternatively, type in the name of the font in the Font text box. 4. Type in a name for the font symbol in the Name text box. 5. Select bold or italic text (if you like) and then type in the font size that you desire in the Size box. 6. Click OK. The dialog box disappears, and the name that you gave the font symbol appears in the Library panel. 282 Part V: The Movie and the Web
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8. In Flash Professional 8 only, in the Accessibility panel s Tab Index field, you may enter the number corresponding to the object s tab index value, if appropriate. The tab index determines how users can use the Tab key to navigate through and select one of the buttons, check boxes, and other controls in your movie. For example, suppose that you have three buttons with a tab index of 1, 2, and 3, respectively. When the movie starts, if the user presses the Tab key three times, the button with the tab index of 3 would be selected for input. If you have the Accessibility panel open when nothing in your movie is selected, the panel offers you the option to Make Movie Accessible, which is selected by default. This allows screen readers to read the different objects in the Flash movie. You definitely want this option selected if you want to make your movie accessible to screen readers and other hardware and software for people with disabilities. Of course, you also have to name each object by using the Accessibility panel, as we describe in the preceding steps, for this to be useful. Sharing Libraries on the Run A runtime shared library is a library in a movie that has been posted to a Web site and is used by another Flash Player file (.swf). The movie using the shared library object doesn t contain the object but just uses it from the shared library. Shared libraries can help make it easier to manage and revise the elements in your movies. For example, you can use a single shared library for multiple Flash movies to access a sound; when you update the sound in the shared library, the sound is updated for all the movies that share it. Creating a shared library A runtime shared library can be a movie clip, a button, a graphic symbol, a sound, a bitmap, or a font symbol. (See Chapter 7 for the lowdown on symbols.) You create a runtime shared library when you want to make an element in your movie available to other SWF player files. You do this by defining linked objects in a movie s library. To create a runtime shared library, follow these steps: Chapter 12: Putting It All Together 281
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Users can also navigate around most of Flash s components by using the keyboard rather than the mouse this is automatically built into the components. And ActionScript has features that can enhance the accessibility of Flash documents. One of the easiest ways to make your Flash movie more accessible to people with disabilities is to use the Accessibility panel. When you add buttons, movie clips, text, Input Text fields, or components to your movie, you can use the Accessibility panel to make them accessible to screen readers. (Not all components can be made accessible, but most can.) To make a button, movie clip, text, Input Text field, or component accessible, follow these steps: 1. Choose Window.Other Panels.Accessibility to open the Accessibility panel if it isn t already open. If necessary, click the collapse arrow on the Accessibility panel title bar to expand it. 2. Select the button, movie clip, text, Input Text field, or component on the Stage. 3. In the Accessibility panel, select Make Object Accessible. 4. If you selected a movie clip in Step 2, select the Make Child Objects Accessible check box in the Accessibility panel if you want objects embedded within the movie clip to also be accessible. For example, select the Make Child Objects Accessible check box if you want to allow text objects in the movie clip to be read by the screen reader software. 5. In the Accessibility panel s Name text field, type in a name for the symbol or component. The screen reader can read this name aloud. 6. In the Accessibility panel s Description text field, type in a description of the symbol or component. The screen reader can read this description aloud. 7. In the Accessibility panel s Shortcut text field, type in a keyboard shortcut that viewers can use to select the object, if appropriate. If, for instance, the object is a radio button that needs to be selected to receive input, follow this step. The screen reader can then use this information to read aloud something like, The shortcut for this text field is Ctrl+K. (Not all screen readers support this feature.) Typing in information in the Shortcut text field doesn t actually implement keyboard shortcut functionality. You need to use ActionScript to detect and respond to any shortcut key-presses. 280 Part V: The Movie and the Web
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In the Find text box, you can type any expression to search the entire movie. Suppose that you want to know whether a movie contains the getURL action. Just type getURL in the Find text box, and the Movie Explorer displays every instance containing that word. The Find feature is not case-sensitive, which is handy if you can t remember how things are capitalized. But the Find feature is sensitive to spaces, so if the movie contains getURL and you type get URL, you don t get any result. Also, be sure to clear your search when it s done, or the Movie Explorer will seem to stop working. You can use the Movie Explorer to select objects on the Stage or frames. Just click the item in the Movie Explorer, and Flash selects the object or frame. (If you select a frame, Flash also includes the frames up to the next keyframe.) If you select a scene, Flash selects the first frame of the scene. The Movie Explorer contains an extensive menu that you can access by either clicking in the upper-right corner of the Movie Explorer panel, or right-clicking (Windows) or Control+clicking (Mac) inside the Movie Explorer panel. Some of the more useful features of this menu are Find in Library: Opens the Library (if it isn t already open) and highlights the object that you previously selected in the Movie Explorer. Rename: Lets you rename the selected object, such as a button instance. Copy All Text to Clipboard: Copies all the text in the Movie Explorer to the Clipboard (of course) so that you can paste it into another application. Print: Prints the entire contents of the Movie Explorer. All items, whether collapsed or expanded, are printed. If you have difficulty understanding one of the more advanced Flash movies on our companion Web site, try opening the Movie Explorer in the movie. Look for actions and movie clips. You might be surprised at what you can discover by using this tool. Making Your Site More Accessible Flash includes capabilities that make it possible for you to make Flash more accessible to people with disabilities. Most of the components in Flash 8 are designed to be accessible to the visually impaired through the use of screen readers, which generate a spoken description of the contents of your Flash screen. Screen reader software is widely available from a variety of companies. Chapter 12: Putting It All Together 279
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You usually know what you re looking for when you open the Movie Explorer. For example, you might be looking for ActionScript or movie clips. Use the buttons at the top of the Movie Explorer to specify which movie elements are shown in the main window: Show Text: Displays all text objects in the movie. Show Buttons, Movie Clips, and Graphics: Displays a list of those objects. Show Action Scripts: Lists all ActionScript in the movie. Show Video, Sounds, and Bitmaps: Lists those objects. Show Frames and Layers: Shows each frame and each layer that contains objects. Customize Which Items to Show: Opens the Movie Explorer Settings dialog box, where you can indicate which items you want to show by marking or clearing them in a list of check boxes. You can also choose to display Movie Elements (scenes), Symbol Definitions (a separate listing by symbol), or both. Click OK to close this dialog box. Movie elements are shown in a hierarchical manner in the Movie Explorer. For example, if a button has an action attached to it, you see a plus sign (Windows) or a right-pointing triangle (Mac) next to the button. Click any plus sign or right-pointing triangle to expand the display in this case, to reveal the ActionScript for that button. Click any minus sign (Windows) or downward-pointing triangle (Mac) to collapse the display. Figure 12-4: Go exploring with the Movie Explorer to discover the many nooks and crannies in a movie. 278 Part V: The Movie and the Web
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You can even paste in the HTML here from another page you publish that checks for an earlier version of the Flash Player. So you could check first for Flash Player 8, for example, and then if that isn t detected, the HTML code for the alternative HTML content might check for Flash Player 6. And if even that isn t detected, the alternative HTML content could consist of HTML code for a page in a series of HTML-only, non-Flash pages. Creating alternative sites Some Flash sites include a complete set of non-Flash (HTML) pages for viewers who don t have the Flash Player and don t want to bother downloading it. If you use features unique to Flash 8, you can also create a Flash 6 site that uses only features available in Flash 6. The overwhelming majority of Web surfers have Flash Player 6 or later. But don t forget how much time you spend updating your Web site now. Imagine updating two or three sites! Make sure that you think through the consequences of having so many alternatives. For detailed information on how many computer users have which versions of the Flash player, check out the latest Macromedia statistics at www.macromedia.com/software/player_census/flashplayer/ version_penetration.html. You may be surprised by the statistics there. Using the Movie Explorer The Movie Explorer is a great tool for analyzing an entire movie. When you start creating complex relationships among several Timelines, you might have trouble remembering what you ve done. The Movie Explorer lays out the entire structure of your movie for you to see. The Movie Explorer is also a great tool for troubleshooting problems that might arise. By visually displaying your movie s components, you can more easily find where the trouble lies. Another use for the Movie Explorer is to analyze other people s FLA files. When you open someone else s movie, you might wonder where the movie is. It might all be hidden in movie clips and actions that call other movies and movie clips. The Movie Explorer can help you ferret out the magic behind the animation. To open the Movie Explorer, choose Window.Movie Explorer. The Movie Explorer is shown in Figure 12-4. Chapter 12: Putting It All Together 277
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Letting the user decide Some sites let the viewer simply choose between a Flash site and a non-Flash site. The problem with this method is that many users have no idea what Flash is, let alone whether they have the Flash Player. A better method to let users determine whether they have the Flash Player is to place a small Flash animation that is also a button on an initial HTML Web page. Instructions tell them to click the button if they can see the animation, which links them to the main portion of your Flash site. If they cannot see the animation, you can offer an image with a link (or linked text) to the Macromedia Flash Player download site and another link to an alternative HTML site. (See Chapter 8 for instructions on creating a Flash button.) At the very least, you should offer users the opportunity to download the Flash Player. Do this with a link that connects them to the following URL: www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer Detecting the Flash Player version A more sophisticated method is to automatically test for a particular version of the Flash Player. Then you might have one site for Flash Player 5 or later, for example, and a second HTML site for viewers that don t have Flash Player 5 or later. You may detect a particular Flash Player version simply by marking the Detect Flash Version check box in the HTML tab in Flash s Publish Settings before you publish your movie. (See Chapter 13 for the scoop on specifying Publish Settings.) This does a great job of detecting a particular Flash Player version but generates a lot of fairly fancy JavaScript code. This works really well if you don t need to customize the code, but the code isn t easy for beginners to customize. Suppose you do enable the Detect Flash Version check box (as we describe in Chapter 13). Then when you publish your Flash file, the resulting HTML code displays Alternate HTML content should be placed here on your Web page if the Flash Player of the specified version can t be found or if the Web browser doesn t have scripting enabled. You can edit the HTML to replace the sentence Alternate HTML content should be placed here with whatever alternative content you want to display to the viewer if the Flash Player version can t be found. 276 Part V: The Movie and the Web
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