flash (macromedia): Software such as http://www.qarbon.com Viewlet Builder (and I guess many
others) installs as a local executable application which provides a user
interface allowing the creation of flash animations.

Does anybody know how that's done from a programming point of view? Is there
a software library that software developers can use to generate swf files? I
can't seem to find anything obvious here. I'm hoping it's possible to do
something like that from MS Visual Studio.

Thanks in advance.

Steve.

I seem to remember that SWF format is open source. You might want to check OSFlash for info:

http://www.osflash.org/

Cheers!

No problem! Good luck with it!