The first step to write a program is to create a file in which the code is to be written. Normally, when you are dealing with Flash, you can see the menu section CREATE FILE. In this section, you can find various file types but remember to click on Flash File (Action Script 3.0). Some users might not see the welcome panel when they start. In that case, you must select 'New' from the drop down menu of either Flash or File located at the top left of the window. Remember to select Action Script 3.0 again while selecting the file type in the pop-up window. Now your Flash file is created and you must save it in the source folder before proceeding further. You must always save the file with the .fla extension and don't forget to use the 'save as' option.

Now it is the time to learn about publish settings, but first you must gain some knowledge about different file extensions such as .html and .swf files. However, for now you don't need to go deeply into this – just focus on the publish settings. You can find the option for publish settings, when you click on the File option. When the dialog box is opened for publish settings, you'll see that the Flash and HTML check boxes are checked by default. You will find that Flash files have the .swf extension and HTML have the .html extension. These files are saved in the folder where we previously saved our .fla file: the source folder.

Here we need to change the publish settings because we want the compiled files to be in the deploy folder. This can be performed by typing ../ before the file name for both Flash and html files. Typing these symbols moves the file one folder back without much strain to the user. However, if we want to move the present file to a specific folder directly from publish settings, we must type ../target folder/ before the file name. In most of the cases, the target folder is the deploy folder and hence, typing ../deploy/ before main.swf will move the main.swf file to the deploy folder.

Learning how to work with the publish settings is not of a step necessary for every programing language: other languages such as javascript don't even need them. This step is focused on getting you aware of the work flow in Flash rather than a general step in programing.