| Projectors are self-sufficient applications for playing Flash content. To play a projector file, the end user double-clicks the projector icon. Projectors are an excellent way to distribute movies directly to people; for example, you can e-mail a Flash-animated greeting card to a friend. Projectors are platform-specific, but you can make projectors for both the Mac and Windows platform from either platform. To create a projector 1. | Open the Flash document from which you want to publish a projector. | 2. | Choose File > Publish Settings. The Publish Settings dialog appears; choose a new base publishing profile, or leave the current setting. | 3. | In the Formats section (Figure 16.51), choose one of the following options: Windows Projector (.exe) creates a projector that runs in Windows. Macintosh Projector creates a projector that runs on a Mac. Figure 16.51. To create a stand-alone run-time version of your movie, choose Windows Projector or Macintosh Projector in the Formats tab of the Publish Settings dialog. You have no other options for formatting projectors. | 4. | Click the Publish button. As it creates the projector files, Flash displays the Publishing dialog, which has a progress bar and a button for canceling the operation. Unless you choose a new location (via the file destination button), Flash places the projector files in the same location as the original Flash document. A projector has a distinctive icon (Figure 16.52). Figure 16.52. The projector is a stand-alone run-time file with a special icon. When you create a Windows projector on a Mac, the icon looks like an ActionScript file's icon. When you view the file on Windows, the circular Flash icon appears. Double-click the icon to launch the projector. |
Playing Macintosh Projectors Created in Windows When you publish a Macintosh projector on a computer running the Windows operating system, Flash gives the projector the extension .hqx. That extension indicates a file encoded in binhex format. Macintosh users need to translate the file by using a program such as BinHex or StuffIt Deluxe to play the projector on the Mac OS. |
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