I am new in Flex 4 and ActionScript 3 So while reading, I found these file extensions many times. As I know that Application developers use MXML in combination with ActionScript to develop rich Internet applications, with products such as Adobe Flex. But I am unable to understand that what are these files and actionscript file is .as
file.
But when somewhere I found these extensions swf
and fla
then it make me confuse.
Are .as
, .fla
, .swf
are same files? if no , then what are the difference among these?
As I mentioned that I am very much new to Flex and ActionScript then I hope experts will tolerate if this quesion is bogus or not good
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Despicable
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1 Answers
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It's easy: .as
is a textual file , contains ActionScript 3 code , you can write it even in NotePad. .fla
is format of Adobe Flash IDE , it contains graphics and animations and some code too. You can compile both .as
and .fla
into .swf
file - Adobe Flash Player can open and play/show it. Every browser has Flash Player plugin inside it , so you can see all the flash games and banners . Clear?

Ivan Chernykh
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It means that if I am using flex builder then ActionScipt files would be stored with .`as` extension as it is readable by flex builder and if I am using Adobe Flash IDE then it will store same action script file with `.fla`? – Despicable Jun 04 '13 at 07:39
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@Despicable In Flash IDE you usually create graphics , and in FlashBuilder you write your code. Flash IDE is worst for code writing. – Ivan Chernykh Jun 04 '13 at 07:47
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@Despicable yes , at the end both of them know to compile to `.swf` . You can make graphical stuff in Flash , compile it to `swf` , after that you can `embed` this `swf` in FlashBuilder and continue work on it – Ivan Chernykh Jun 04 '13 at 07:57