Flash Basics > Previewing and testing movies > Testing movies

Testing movies

Although Flash can play movies in the authoring environment, many animation and interactive functions cannot work unless the movie is exported in its final format. Using commands in the Control menu, you can export the current movie as a Flash Player movie and immediately play the movie in a new window. The exported movie uses the options set in the Publish Settings dialog box. You can also use this window to test downloading performance. See Testing movie download performance. In addition, you can test a movie in a Web browser.

You can also test actions in a movie using the Debugger. See "Using the Debugger" in the troubleshooting chapter of ActionScript Help.

To test all interactive functions and animation:

Choose Control > Test Movie or Control > Test Scene.

Flash creates a Flash Player movie (a SWF file), opens it in a separate window, and plays it with the Flash Player. The SWF file is placed into the same folder as the FLA file.

To test the movie in a Web browser:

Choose File > Publish Preview > HTML. See Previewing the publishing format and settings.