FAQ: What's the difference between the Flash Player and Flash Projector?

The other day a reader e-mailed me asking, "What's the difference between the Flash player and the Flash projector?" The main difference is that the Flash player is required to play SWF files, meaning at some point or another it has to be downloaded onto your machine so that your computer knows how to recognize and open SWF animations, while the Flash projector allows you to run Flash files as a standalone executable - although there are a few other differences, as well.

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