Macromedia FlashPaper first appeared in Macromedia Contribute as a tool to easily publish office documents to the web by converting them to the Macromedia Flash SWF file format. In most cases, you embed FlashPaper-generated SWF files into web pages to provide a quick online preview of a document.

Figure 1. FlashPaper embedded in a SWF using the FlashPaper API

But since FlashPaper SWF files are true SWF files, you can use them as you would any other SWF file. For example, you can import a FlashPaper-generated SWF file into your Macromedia Flash project and manipulate it just as you would any other SWF file.

In addition, FlashPaper-generated SWF files have an application programming interface (API) that you can use to control many of the unique features of a FlashPaper SWF file.

With FlashPaper 2, Macromedia introduced a new version of FlashPaper, available as a standalone product or bundled with Macromedia Contribute 3. FlashPaper 2 introduces a new API to control the behavior of a FlashPaper document when embedded in another file. This article provides an overview of the FlashPaper 2 API along with a few examples of how to use it.

Requirements

To complete this tutorial you will need to install the following software and files:

FlashPaper2

Macromedia Flash MX 2004

Macromedia Flash 7.2 Update

Download the Flash MX 2004 and Flash MX Professional 2004 7.2 updater for English:

Important: Do not uninstall Flash to add this updater. The updater installs over your current version.

• Download the English Windows Updater (EXE, 66.66 MB)
• Download the English Macintosh Updater (DMG, 73.46 MB)

Tutorials and sample files:

• flashpaper_demo_final.zip (ZIP, 1.2MB)