FLAVer is a free app that opens Flash FLA files in the version of Flash that was used to create it. That means you don’t have to open the version of Flash you want to open an FLA in before you open the FLA. This is great when you have projects that were created in different versions of Flash but must remain in those FLA versions in order for others to use them.

I have been using FLAVer for more than a year internally at Northcode since all of our example FLAs are written in MX, for maximum user compatibility, but other projects were done in MX04, and more recently 8.

Since Tim created FLAVer I don’t even think about opening an FLA.

Download it here.

As an aside, this functionality has been active in SWF Studio V3 since it came out. As long as your FLA is named the same as your main SWF, and it is located in the same directory (the typical case), you can press Alt+F and the correct version of Flash will open your FLA.