Camisade,

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You'll be deploying a Flash "movie," also called an application (people
around here tend to call an ActionScript-heavy SWF an application, and the
"light" ones movies). The client is actually what *plays* this SWF, which
is the user's browser with a Flash Player plug-in installed.

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It publishes SWFs all the way back to Flash 1.

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http://www.macromedia.com/software/player_census/flashplayer/version_penetration.html

Take Macromedia's data here with a grain of salt, but that's the
official answer.

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Your best bet there is to download the trial and read the included
documentation (also available on their website). Every last function,
property, method, class, keyword, what-have-you is listed by version
availability.


David
stiller (at) quip (dot) net
"Luck is the residue of good design."

We're looking at deploying a flash client and our belief is that to reach the
maximum number of users without forcing them to update their Flash
installations, we probably need to deploy Flash 5, rather than go with a more
recent version. Can Macromedia MX Studio 2004's Flash Pro be used to generate
Flash 5 compatible clients? Or do you have to buy Flash 5 to do that? Are
there any metrics available that show what kind of installed base each of the
versions of Flash have, and what capabilities have been added with each
version, so we can make a more informed decision about the trade off between
feature set and end-use accessibility?

As a general rule of thumb, with flash most companies (blue chip,
entertainment, whatever) are happy to develop and deploy content for the
most recent-but-one Flash player - i.e. currently FP6. As you can see by
following David's link, MM claim a pretty high market penetration percentage
for FP6.