Generator Overview

Macromedia Generator is the Web server production application that can dynamically combine text, graphics, and sound to build rich media content and deliver the final product in a variety of animated or static formats. With Generator, designers work in Flash to create templates that contain variable elements (graphics, text, and sound) to be replaced with content provided by a data source (text files, databases, and so on). This generated content can be played back in a client browser as Flash player movies, or as JPEG, PNG, GIF, animated GIF, or QuickTime files. (You can also deliver the content as a projector.) Generator frees designers from the tedium of updating Flash movies each time they make a small change to the content and lets designers author the graphical front-ends for sophisticated server-side applications, such as interactive weather maps or site navigation. To author Generator content and preview within the Flash environment only requires the Generator Authoring Extensions to be installed.

The Generator server is required if you want to preview Generator templates online through your Web server or you want to batch process templates with a command-line version of Generator. Online processing is best suited for Web sites where graphics need to be customized for each visitor to the Web site. Offline processing is best suited for Web sites where the data source changes infrequently. Please refer to the Using Generator manual for further information.

For online help for using Generator, download the help system from the Macromedia Web site.

The information in Generator Help is the same as that in the printed Using Generator book. A printable version of Using Generator is also available on the Flash 5 CD or from the Generator Developers Support Center.