Misc Flash things

• ActionScript is one of the more complicated parts of Flash, and I think what has the most differences between versions perhaps. OTOH it ought to be a relatively consistent feature between generator APIs, which I think deal with the standard AS source code. But perhaps they have to compile it????
• Criticism_of_Adobe_Flash
• Open Source Flash dev community
• Local_Shared_Object, aka "Flash Cookies".

How to generate Flash .SWF files

• Ming- See Ming stuff, this is quite an old (yet still active) library, gives you pretty low-level access via a C or PHP etc API. But it's terribly underdocumented.
• SSWF, a C/C++ library vaguely similar to Ming. AFAIR it also has a command-line tool that compiles SWF from scripty files, but it doesn't have a PHP module. Authors have made themselves into a company with SSWF still as a free open-source product, and commercial support available.
• SWFTools, a set of tools including a "swfc" command line tool that compiles SWF from fairly well documented script files. Documentation assumes Flash v5 or so IIRC, whereas much of the documentation for Ming assumes V4, or outdated versions of Ming such that things simply don't work. For Ming I mean. I haven't tried the swfc tool yet. Sounds decent but maybe not quite as flexible as Ming. Note it apparently uses the same Actionscript compiler as Ming?? Or did at some point.
• Swfmill, another command line tool, but one that produces SWF files from XML source (and converts them back again). Not investigated yet.
• MTASC, an open-source ActionScript compiler (only that, it seems?) written in OCaml, is apparently very fast and has more thorough error checking, than the official compiler.

Viewing/rendering Flash .SWF files

• Adobe Flashplayer plugin, in the browser. DUH
• Adobe standalone Flashplayer app, not without its share of issues, but can save browser from getting nuked at least. Flash does tend to crash.
• Gnash, a GPLed open-source plugin+viewer from GNU
• Swfdec, another open-source one backed by different organisations.
• "GPL Flash Player", I think this is pretty old. It may have been the origin of some of the other projects??