Now that you know how to create animations and working interactivity with Flash the only remaining section to show you is how to export your finished product to the web and beyond. Accompanying this tutorial is a downloadable zip file you can use as an example to try out exporting or you can use any of the previous animations you have created during these tutorials. First save your working file or “.FLA” by going to File > Save. This is not web ready and should not be distributed. Next we can look at creating files for distribution to the web and CDROM. The procedure is known as Publishing as the term Export in Flash refers to other graphical optimisation processes. To view your options go to File > Publish Settings…

This opens the Publish Settings box and reveals a number of options to you. As you can see by default Flash only wants to export as its native format types, “swf” and “html”. These are the web ready animation file and the web page ready for further Dreamweaver editing if you want to. However, you are able to create lots of other file types in one go using this method. As you will see you can create alternative image types such as an animated gif of the whole Timeline or a jpeg / png of the first Keyframe possibly for use elsewhere or to be worked further in Fireworks. Even more excitingly you can create a Windows projector or Mac projector, these are actually programmes that will run your animation or presentation you have created anywhere from CDROM or via email even if the other user has never even heard of Flash and does not have it installed this is very powerful. Lastly you can create a Quicktime movie of your animated sequence if you want to..

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