Flash 8 IDE with Flash 9 Player

I have Macromedia Flash 8 Professional installed and sometimes I use it to create assets (pictures, sounds, videos, etc.) for embedding in my ActionScript classes. Programming-wise this all works great, but if you install Flash 8 on a machine after the Flex 2 SDK, then you'll notice viewing SWF's will launch the stand-alone Flash 8 Player.

There's a couple of things you can do to remedy this, but first uninstall the Flash 8 Player using the Add/Remove Programs control panel applet. Don't uninstall Flash 8 itself unless you decide you didn't want that old crusty IDE from Macrowhatever and you can stop reading now. Strangely enough removing the version 8 player from that list will not stop your SWF's from using it when you double-click them or launch them from a command-line; at least that was what happened in my case.

So the second step is to run the Flash 9 Player and open a SWF, any SWF. By doing this you'll cause it to associate that file extension to it and further attempts to open a SWF will use that version of the player. I actually did try the "Open With ..." option off the right-click context menu on a SWF, but Windows refused me to do anything when I selected the executable. Very strange.

As an alternative second step, download the latest player from Adobe which they call "Flash Player 9 Projector content debugger". Their installer will link up the file extension stuff for you and perhaps you needed a newer version anyway (ObjectEncoding.AM3 ... ahem).