This makes absolutely no sense!

[The Almost Flasher]

Why on earth can I download the fla's for some effects and I open them in Flash (tried in 4 and in 5) and yet they don't work. I publish and see nothing.....what's the purpost of having the fla's if that's how it is?
I downloaded an fla in hope that I could add something small to an effect I liked but nooo.....it won't work right in flash....please do explain!

[RUSHVision]

Give this a try........

Open up one of the provided .fla's to use as a template for your new effect and save it as "tempeffect.fla" inside the SWfx Effects directory with all of the other effects. Set up the actionscript to name this effect "Temp Effect" so it will always show up as such in your SWfx effect list.

Next, make whatever changes to the effect that you had planned and publish to .swf only. Don't save the tempeffect.fla again after making your changes.....just publish. You will, in fact, never save the tempeffect.fla again unless you make some kind of mistake. Open up SWfx and choose "Temp Effect" from the list to preview your effect. The preview window will automatically show the new effect every time you publish your modifications when you hit the "Preview" button.

Once you are satisfied with the way your effect looks, go back to the action script and change the name of the effect to something appropriate. You can now save your .fla with the new name to either the same directory or you can save it to one reserved for effects that you have created. I prefer to save it to the same directory for now and move it later, and the next step may tell you why. Now publish to .swf again and this will create a new .swf that has both the correct file name and the correct effect name in the actionscript. Once I have created all of my effects, I will move all of the .flas and leave the .swfs. If you want to make changes later, you can always reopen the .fla and use the same process to preview your effect in SWfx. Remember though, that to get your new effects to show up in the effects list, you have to quit and restart the program. If you do this often, you may want to create a directory for Disabled Effects and move the bulk of your effects into here so you don't have to wait for all of them to load each time you start the program.

To create your next effect, just reopen your tempeffect.fla and begin the process again. The most important thing being to do all of the steps in the specified order. By using this method you can generate and preview effects very quickly.

[The Almost Flasher]

Okay...now I see what I do with it... Thanks.....I think I'll go start making some effects....I'll post them when I get up to 25 of them...............

[RUSHVision]

That's what I like to see.....that creative spark in action! Flash On!