Look at the back cover of this book and you will see how the pages are laid out with numbered steps, tasks, and illustrations to make material easier to absorb. That is why it says "For those who rather be shown how rather than told how."

Running Flash Content from Desktop using Flash StandAlone Player

How do you run Flash content from your desktop without using a browser?

Given Flash content in the form of an SWF file, this tutorial will show you how to run the Flash content from you desktop using the Flash Stand-Alone player. Here I have Flash content that is 150px by 150px

compiled into the file simple.swf.

Typically Flash content compiled into an SWF file is meant to be hosted on the webserver and displayed and played using a browser as is what is down in the Flash content above.

However, there may be times when you have been given a SWF file that you want to play on your desktop without using your browser. This is useful in presentations and demos when you want to display the content full-screen without the browser frame.

If you want to follow along as we show you how to do this, right-click on the simple.swf link and save it to your computer if you want to follow along.

To run the Flash SWF from your desktop you will need to install the Flash standalone player. If you have Macromedia Flash for producing Flash content, they you will most likely already have the Standalone Flash player installed.

If not, you can download the Flash standalone player from Adobe linked here. They are also known as Projectors or Content Debugger as shown below...

Once you have that downloaded. Run it and select its menu File -> Open and point to the SWF flash content...

Now you can see my sample simple.swf Flash content running in the Flash Player...

Note that the content runs at its native size of 150px by 150px.

What if I want to show this Flash presentation at a larger size?

You can simply resize the Flash player, the Flash content will automatically resize while maintaining the same aspect ratio. Because Flash uses vectors as opposed to bitmaps, there should not be much quality degradation.

But what if I want it to fill my entire screen and not have the player frame?

Use the menu on the Flash Player and select View -> Full Screen.

The Flash content should now fill the entire screen. The aspect ratio of the content is maintained.

Next: Creating Flash Projector Files

If you are a producing Flash content (such as Flash slideshows or presentaions) that you meant for users to run on their desktop instead of through a browser, then there is a better way. Instead of compiling a SWF, you would product Flash Projector files. This would output a single Flash executable file that users can run simply by double-clicking on the exe file without needing to install the Flash standalone player. We will learn how to do this in the next tutorial.

Next Lesson:

  Producing Flash Projector Files