Publishing > Publishing overview |  |

Publishing overview

When you're ready to deliver your movie to an audience, you can publish the Macromedia Flash MX document (FLA file) for playback. By default, the Publish command creates the Flash SWF file and an HTML document that inserts your Flash movie in a browser window.

The Macromedia Flash Player 6 supports Unicode text encoding for SWF movies in Macromedia Flash Player 6 format. This support greatly enhances your ability to use multilingual text in SWF movies that you create with Macromedia Flash MX; you can even use multiple languages within a single text field. Any user with the Macromedia Flash Player 6 can view multilanguage text in a Macromedia Flash Player 6 movie, regardless of the language used by the operating system running the player. See Creating Multilanguage Text.

You can also publish the FLA file in alternative file formats—GIF, JPEG, PNG, and QuickTime—with the HTML needed to display them in the browser window. Alternative formats enable a browser to display your movie's animation and interactivity for users who don't have the Flash Player 6 installed. When you publish a FLA file in alternative file formats, the settings for each file format are stored with the FLA file.

You can export the FLA file in a variety of formats as well. Exporting FLA files is similar to publishing FLA files in alternative file formats, except that the settings for each file format are not stored with the FLA file. See Exporting.

As an alternative to using the Publish command, if you're proficient in HTML, you can create your own HTML document with any HTML editor and include the tags required to display a Flash movie. See Configuring a Web server for Flash.

Before you publish your movie, it's important to test how the movie works using the Test Movie and Test Scene commands. For more information, see Testing movie download performance.