Technical Adobe Flash (FLA) question

[UserNameGoesHere]

Okay so as I understand it, there are several filetypes used in Flash development. Among them are .fla .as .mxml .flm .swf .swc .swz and possibly others, which combined in the right way with the right tools will yield your .swf file which is what you'd include in your object and embed HTML tags to make the Flash program work in a browser.

I have tools which I can use to work with all of those filetypes except .fla

Is there anything other than Adobe's commercial Creative Suite or Flash Builder which can work with these files? Alternately, is the file format specification for .fla publicly posted anywhere? My searches for both indicate "no".

I don't really need to use .fla in a new application but it might be nice if I have that option. Also most code from other people includes .fla files and thus is useless to me without a proper tool.

I know the .fla is mostly the animation stuff (MovieClip), and animation could be achieved strictly in code (.as .flm) but it's additional work. If I could use/generate .fla files directly (preferably via GUI), I could more neatly separate the graphics/animation from the backend code. And I'd be able to work with other peoples' code as well (since most use .fla files)

"Just use the 30 day demo" and "Just use Creative Suite/Flash Builder" are not acceptable answers as I'd like to use it longer than 30 days, I'd like to keep it legal, and I don't have the $700-ish to spend on full (not update) Flash Builder.

I don't strictly-speaking have to have this, since for a brand new project, animation could be done entirely strictly in code, but I wouldn't be able to work on other peoples' projects if they used even a single .fla file in the code anywhere and it is nice to have.

[fido123]

I'm no expert at all on Flash but it's an application made by adobe to be used by adobe software. There are other flash "players" such as "swfdeck" and at least one other one I remember running into but that's it. To boot both of those are terrible since they don't have the understanding Adobe has on how flash works, and therefore can't make a player that's all that great. Pretty much just stick with Adobe products for working with Adobe files so you're going to need to shell out the money for Flash.

[sticklydude]

To my knowledge, there is no alternative for when working with .fla files. I'm afraid you're going to have to take the piracy route.

[UserNameGoesHere]

fido123, this isn't a Flash player/playback question. It is a Flash development question. .fla despite being a "source" file is nevertheless a binary format rather than text and, as such, isn't so simple to edit/generate/use without a proper tool. The only known tool is Adobe's expensive commercial one. If I had the file format specification, I could write my own tool which could work with it.

sticklydude, that's what I was afraid of.

Well I guess I'll just have to go without it for now. It does make about 98% of example code about useless to me, but oh well (since people tend to do it the .fla+.as way rather than simply just .as or .as+.mxml - which is what I'd be doing)

[fido123]

Originally Posted by UserNameGoesHere

fido123, this isn't a Flash player/playback question. It is a Flash development question. .fla despite being a "source" file is nevertheless a binary format rather than text and, as such, isn't so simple to edit/generate/use without a proper tool. The only known tool is Adobe's expensive commercial one. If I had the file format specification, I could write my own tool which could work with it.

sticklydude, that's what I was afraid of.

Well I guess I'll just have to go without it for now. It does make about 98% of example code about useless to me, but oh well (since people tend to do it the .fla+.as way rather than simply just .as or .as+.mxml - which is what I'd be doing)

Sorry wasn't really understanding your question and was tired as hell. Anyway yeah, you're only route it Flash. Adobe probably makes FLA files as hard to understand as possible.