FLA Version Checker and Launcher

Posted on Fri Jul 27 2007 in Tools by Tim

When you double click on an FLA file it opens the last version of Flash that you used instead of the version of Flash that was used to create the FLA. If you have multiple versions of Flash installed, every click to open an FLA file is like rolling the dice. If you lose you get the "Unexpected file format" message, which really means "open me in the right version of Flash please".

If the last version of Flash you had open was MX 2004 and you double click on a version 6 (Flash MX) FLA file it will open, but it can take a looong time and then you still have to close Flash MX 2004 and reopen the FLA in Flash MX so you can edit it without making a mess of the FLA.

Admittedly the amount of time lost isn't huge, but it sure is annoying and life would be so much easier if the FLA was just opened in the right version of Flash. Well, I finally got fed up and created a utility that will do this... the Flash Version Checker and Launcher or FLAver for short.

When you install FLAver it hijacks the FLA format from Flash and associates all FLA files with FLAver.exe so when you double click on an FLA file it is opened by FLAver first. FLAver doesn't actually open the FLA file for editing, it just looks at the version of the FLA file and at the versions of Flash you have installed and chooses the closest version match for the FLA file. If you try to open an FLA file and you don't have a version of Flash that can open those FLA files FLAVer will present you with an error message like the one below, otherwise the FLA just opens in Flash and you can go on about your business.

FLAver was designed to run on all current versions of the Windows desktop operating systems and works with all versions of Flash from 4 right up to Flash CS4 (Flash 10).

Version: 1.2
Released: December 2, 2008
Download: flaver.1.2.setup.exe (311KB)

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Comments

Thanks for the app -- very useful.

Posted by Brien Malone on 22 May 2009 at 3:40pm

you save my day...

Posted by David Porras on 27 May 2009 at 7:07pm

How does it detect the version of the FLA file?

Posted by Mike on 17 Nov 2009 at 1:14pm

I spent some quality time reverse engineering parts of the FLA format back in 2003 and found out where the version information was stored and wrote some code to read it from any FLA.

Posted by Tim on 17 Nov 2009 at 3:16pm

thats a real time saver nifty application thanks allot.
the only problem is every time i open fla it pops an error window saying : 'windows cannot find:......Make sure you typed the name correctly,and then try again...' i will appreciate any respond, thank you.

Posted by dan on 21 Jul 2010 at 3:39am

What version of Flash are you using. This has been tested with everything up to CS3. There is a problem I'm aware of with CS4 (Adobe changed something) but it hasn't been tested with CS5 yet.

Posted by tim on 21 Jul 2010 at 3:56am

I have used this program in the past with great success. I am trying to install it on my new computer, which has Windows 7 for an OS, and I get the following message:

Error creating registry key: "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\.fla\UserChoice

RegCreateKeyEx failed; code 5.
Access is denied."

I tried running as admin, and I still get the issue. Any suggestions?

Posted by Nephi on 30 Dec 2011 at 4:50pm

If you run the setup EXE on Windows 7 it should prompt you for elevation (admin rights) which would be the same as running it by right clicking and choosing Run As Administrator. That should grant the application sufficient rights to modify the parts of the registry it needs to change.

Posted by Tim on 30 Dec 2011 at 6:50pm

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FLA Version Checker and Launcher

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