The SWF file is widely used in website designing for displaying animated vector graphics, far exceeding the W3C open standard SVG, which has met with problems over competing implementations. The SWF file format is designed to be an efficient binary delivery format to deliver vector graphics, text, video, and sound over the Internet, not a format for exchanging graphics between graphics editors.

A SWF file is made up of a header, followed by a number of tags. The two types of tags are definition tags and control tags. Definition tags define the objects known as characters, which are stored in the dictionary. Control tags manipulate characters, and control the flow of the file.

The most convenient way for creating a SWF file is using flash creation tool which will enable you to import images, graphics, and sound from all popular formats. AnvSoft Photo Flash Maker is of this kind for creating stunning flash banner with SWF file output.

AnvSoft Photo Flash Maker is a freeware for creating elegant photo flash slideshow. If you don't mind the logo in the last slide, or if you don't use it for commercial purpose, it is undoubtedly the best freeware for making photo flash slideshow for your Website, Blogger, MySpace, YouTube, and more. It can easily make animated photo slide show with SWF file as the output format. AnvSoft Photo Flash Maker is the ideal tool to create slide show widget which you can share your memorial moments with your family or friends on your own homepage, post on your Blog or upload to your own website.

Following is an instruction for creating a stunning flash slideshow with background music and special transition effects. With the aid of Photo Flash Maker, you can also add nice looking animated slide show to your website in a few seconds, and then share those memorable photos with your family or friends. The output format of the following program is SWF file.

(1)   Download AnvSoft Photo Flash Maker and install. Bellow is the interface of the program:

(2)   Adding photos to the slideshow:

Click Add button on the toolbar to select photos from file browse pane. Press Ctrl or Shift key to select multiple photos at one time and add selected photos to the album. You can also simply drag photos from the photo displaying panel and drop them to the slide panel.

(3)   Editing photos

Double-click the selected slide or select a slide and then click Edit button on the slide toolbar. You will see a pop-up window. You can input info, add text & art clip to your slide.

(4)   Apply transition effect

Click Transition Effect tab to apply transition effect to your slides. You can apply transition effect by simply dragging your desirable one from the Transition Effects panel and dropping to the slide below. You can set the transition duration and photo duration here. The maximum duration time for transition and photo is 10seconds and 15senconds respectively. You can also click Define Random Set button to check the transition effects in the pop-up window, then those checked transition effects will be applied to your slides randomly. One thing is needed to remind you here: the 53rd and latter transition effects, such as Fade in and Fade to Black, can only be used in advanced themes.

(5)   Enter properties

Click Properties tab, and then click slide in the slide list, then input title and description in Title and Description text boxes respectively, afterwards click Apply to Selected or Apply to All tab. Insert URL, then click Check Valid tab to see whether it is valid or not.

(6)   Select Basic or Advance Theme for the slideshow

a.     Choose Basic Theme

Here, you can enter your album title, change the Width and the Height, select Background color and transition & photo duration, and define the Frame Rate as well. And you can set auto-play and auto-repeat option here. More than 57 professional-looking slideshow themes, together with several photo decorations are ready for choice.

Click More Options, you will see a pop-up window, and you can set more flash options, like photo URL link and output folder setting, music sample rate and music quality, image size etc.

b.    Customize Advanced Theme

If you need to customize the theme in terms of size, color and other settings, simply click advanced tab, and then select one of your favorite themes from the drop-down list of category.

 Click Customize Properties button and you will see all settings for this theme.

After you complete your changes to the settings, please click Save As button and your modified theme will be automatically saved.

No matter which theme you use, basic theme or advanced theme, you can easily add background music for the slideshow. You can also import audio tracks as background music from CD.

(7)   Choose output format

There are three output options under the Publish window. If you just want to create a flash slideshow, you can just check Create Flash Files Only. Click Publish Now and your creative slideshow will be published according to your setting at once.  If you want to burn your slideshow onto a disc and make it into a backup CD or a gift CD, please check Making a Gift Disc, and choose your CD/ DVD recorder and set the recording speed, Then click Start Burn to burn your slideshow onto a DVD/VCD at once. If you want to share your slideshow with friends, you can check Creating Flash Files and Upload to Go2Album.

Click Publish Now to publish your slideshow at once. After the slideshow published into flash, it will be automatically uploaded to the Go2Album if you have logged in. If not, please just create your Go2Album ID and share your slideshow online. You can choose to View Upload Log and you will see the URL link of your uploaded slideshow at once. Click the link and you can enjoy your flash slideshow on Go2Album immediately. After you uploading the flash file to Go2Album, you will get the code to embedding the swf file to your website, blogger, myspace, etc.