Now that we have started a new Flash project, we need to know what happens when we save that project and reopen it again.

At this point, we have a blank Flash^R project open in the workspace. According to the tab, our project is named Untitled-1. Let's give that project a real name and save it to our hard drive, where we have already created a folder named "LearnFlashBegGuide".

From the Menubar, click File - Save. In the Save dialog box, name our project Sample1.

As you can see, we have several options for the file format of our project. Most of the time you will want to use the most recent file format which is Flash CS6. However, you might want to consider some of the other options.

Flash CS6 Document .fla
Flash CS6 Uncompressed Document .xfl
Flash CS5.5 Document .fla
Flash CS5.5 Uncompressed Document .xfl
Flash CS5 Document .fla
Flash CS5 Uncompressed Document .xfl

Flash CS6 Document - This is the default setting for a Flash CS6 project. You will get one compressed file with the extension .fla in the LearnFlashBegGuide folder.

Sample1.fla

Flash CS6 Uncompressed Document - This will have the same information as the compressed .fla file. However, as the name indicates, the file is uncompressed which gives the Flash developer the option to edit the individual files independently. This is also a good choice when working on a team based project.

When saving your project in the uncompressed version, Flash will create a folder of the same name that you gave to your project inside the LearnFlashBegGuide folder. Inside that folder you will find several files and folders. The main file for your project is the Sample1.xfl file. As the names of the other files indicate, they are used to tell Flash how to reassemble the project when you reopen it into the Flash workspace.

Sample1.xfl
bin folder
LIBRARY folder
META-INF folder
DOMDocument.xml
MobileSettings.xml
PublishSettings.xml

We will save our sample project in the compressed .fla file format. Now that we have saved our project file, we can close the Flash program without loosing any of our work. When we are ready to work on the project again, we will open the Flash program.

From the Welcome screen, we can choose our Sample1.fla from the Open a Recent Item list on the left of the screen.

Another option is to click File - Open from the Menubar and select the Sample1.fla file in the Open dialog box.

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