Did you know that you can easily edit Flash files directly from Dreamweaver? You can set Dreamweaver up to automatically launch Flash, making it a breeze any time you want to edit and update your movies. It’s pretty cool, but of course, you have to have the Flash software installed on your computer for this to work. Let’s give it a try.

Here’s how to edit Flash files from within Dreamweaver:

1. In Dreamweaver, select the Flash file that you’d like to edit.
2. On the Property inspector, click on the Edit button.

If you don’t have Flash installed on your computer, the Edit button is unavailable. If you do have Flash installed, when you click Edit, the Flash software launches.
Now Flash won’t be editing the SWF file directly, but rather, the SWF’s original FLA authoring file. Therefore, if Flash can’t locate the original FLA file, you may be prompted to locate it yourself. If so, just navigate to the file in the dialog box provided, and click OK (Windows) or Choose (Mac). Flash opens the movie for editing.

3. In Flash, make any changes to your movie that you’d like.
4. When your edits are complete, click on the Done button that appears at the top of the Flash window.

Flash exports a new SWF, overwriting the old file, and takes you back to Dreamweaver.

The cool thing about working with Flash and Dreamweaver is that when you make a change to your Flash file, as you did here, you don’t have to resave your Dreamweaver page. When you make changes to a Flash file, no changes are made to the actual web page itself—only the SWF file was changed. So you can head straight for your browser (which is hopefully running in the background) to preview your changes. And that’s how Flash and Dreamweaver work together.

[ Back to Web + Mag Articles ]