6 January 2009 This article applies to Adobe Flash CS4
Professional. For the latest information—and especially if you
are using Flash Professional CS5—please refer to the updated
version of this tutorial, Creating your first Flash Professional
CS5 document. Adobe Flash CS4 Professional is an authoring tool
that designers and developers use to create presentations,
applications, and other content that enables user interaction.
Flash projects can include simple animations, video content,
complex presentations, applications, and everything in between.
In general, individual pieces of content made with Flash
Professional are called applications (or SWF applications), even
though they might only be a basic animation. You can make media-
rich applications by including pictures, sound, video, and
special effects. The SWF format is extremely well suited for
delivery over the Internet because its files are very small.
This is due to its extensive use of vector graphics. Vector
graphics require significantly less memory