Macromedia MAX 2005 - Anaheim, CA What’s New In Flash 8
130
Building a Video Player
This tutorial guides you through the process of creating a simple video player by using some of the
authoring features in Macromedia Flash 8. After it is created, you can deploy the video player in a
web page.
In this tutorial, you will complete the following tasks:
y Review your task
y Examine the completed application
y Create a working folder
y Encode a video file
y Create a new Flash document
y Add a media component
y Publish your document
Review your task
In this tutorial, you will create a type of application known as a flexible messaging area, or FMA. An
FMA is a common type of Flash application used for displaying content that conveys some kind of
informational or marketing message to the audience. In this case, the FMA displays photographs of
items from the restaurant menu. At Macromedia's website, an FMA is used to display information
about new software products and other advertising messages. These are called flexible messaging
areas because they usually occupy an area of the web page that is set aside for content that can
change depending on the needs of the business or website. For example, if Café Townsend has a
special event planned, the FMA could change to display the details of that event instead of the
restaurant's menu items.
In this tutorial, after examining an existing Flash document, you'll begin by creating a new Flash
document and end by publishing the application for web playback. The tutorial should take
approximately 20 to 30 minutes to complete.
Run the completed application
To better understand the type of application you'll create as you work through this tutorial, you can
look at a completed FLA file version of the application in the Flash authoring tool. FLA files are the
files you work on in Flash. You can also play the SWF version of the file in Flash Player. The SWF
version is the version of the file that you would publish in a web page.
To play the SWF version of the file in Flash Player:
1. In Flash, select File > Open.
2. Use one of the following paths to browse to the completed file:
