Lesson 6:

Setting Up & Publishing Your Project
Flash: Interactive Web Animation
by Ken Kimura

Setting Up Your Projects

Your projects will be posted on the School's Website. For that to happen you must set up your project in a very specific way. You will create a folder that contains your published project. I will copy this folder onto a specific place on the School's Web server. If everything is saved correctly, your project will be accesssible on the internet.
  1. If your project is open, quit out of Flash
  2. Inside your Documents folder (found inside your home folder ), create a new folder. Name the folder using the following convention:

    p(project number)_(your last name)(your first initial)

    For example: If your name is Jack Bauer and this is project 1, your folder would be called

    p1_bauerj

    NOTE: USE ALL LOWECASE LETTERS AND DO NOT USE ANY SPACES.
  3. This is where you will place your project file. Your project Flash file should be named:

    project_(project number).fla

    For example: If this is project 1, your Flash file would be called

    project_1.fla

    If it is not, change the name of your project Flash file.
Publishing Your Movie

You are now ready to publish your project. Publishing your project will automatically create 2 other files. These are the files that are used to post your project on the web. One is a "Swiff" file that is a compact version of your project for viewing purposes only, and the other is a webpage that contains the reference to your swiff file. The webpage has the suffix ".html" and the Swiff file has the suffix ".swf"
  1. Open your project file.
  2. Go to the File menu and select "Publish..." OR press the Shift - f12 keys.
  3. Look into your folder and you will see the new files.
  4. Whenever you test your movie, you will update your swiff file. Whenever you test a scene you will create a swiff file for that scene. When you are finished with your project, delete any swiff files that were created from testing scenes.