How to Publish Flash Work Online for Class

Please make sure you can see the FILE EXTENSIONS on your computer (examples: .html .swf .fla .jpg). This page explains how to make file extensions visible in Windows.

How to use "Publish Settings"

See pp. 335–338 in your book (Adobe Flash CS4 Professional Classroom in a Book) for illustrations.

  1. After you have TESTED* your Flash movie and decided it is finished, SAVE it one last time.
  2. File menu > Publish Settings
  3. Formats tab (in Publish Settings): CHECK Flash and HTML. Leave all the others unchecked.
  4. Flash tab (in Publish Settings): Select "Flash Player 9" and "ActionScript 3.0" in the top two menus.
  5. HTML tab (in Publish Settings): Select "Flash Only" in the top menu. CHECK the box in front of "Detect Flash Version." Also UNCHECK these two options: "Loop" and "Display Menu."
  6. Click OK to save these Publish Settings.
  7. File menu > Publish (Yes, this is an additional step AFTER you click OK.)

Now you have three files: FLA, SWF and HTML. All three have the same filename -- only the file extensions are different.

Your SWF is already embedded in this HTML page. If you double-click the HTML file, it will open in your Web browser, and you can see how it looks.

If you View Source on the HTML file, you will see how the Flash object is embedded. This automatic method generates an insane quantity of JavaScript -- don't worry, you will learn a way to eliminate all that bloat on your page.

* To TEST the movie: Ctrl-Enter (Win) or Command-Return (Mac).

How to upload a folder that contains multiple files

You will always need to upload your work to a Web server in this class. It is strongly recommended that you buy a domain name and hosting (instead of relying on the limited space of Plaza).

If you don't know how to FTP, here is a brief tutorial.

  1. Create a new folder on your hard drive. Name it something sensible, such as flash_exercise_1 (note that we do not use spaces or uppercase letters for Web folder names; we also do not use any punctuation other than the _underscore_).
  2. Copy and paste your three files into this folder.
  3. FTP the entire folder to your Web host.
  4. Send the COMPLETE and properly formatted URLs from BOTH the FLA and the HTML page to me in one single e-mail. Please put the URLs alone on two separate lines, like this:

http://flashjournalism.com/book/Lesson03/olive_publish.html

http://flashjournalism.com/book/Lesson03/olive_publish.fla

This will save me from taking many extra steps to copy and paste your URLs, enabling me to simply click (or right-click) them.

 

Mindy McAdams
Professor, Journalism
University of Florida