Adobe make a product for SVG, another vector format. {no comment}
Macromedia make Flash and Director, which are used to create shockwave flash stuff. Discreet make Plasma which creates 3D Flash.
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Okay, Macromedia has open-sourced the SWF file-format. So, third parties software companies can create their own programs that will export to SWF and play with Macromedia's Flash Player/Plugin. Examples of such software happen to include Adobe's Live Motion. (others are Swish, Swift3D, etc)
The FLA file format is Macromedia's proprietary construction format that is closed-source and used solely by the Flash authoring application.
So, what Grant said is both right AND wrong, depending on how you look at it.
Swift 3D and Swish export files as .swf, or imaged frames, .s3d in Swift 3D's case, with the additional export options for animated GIF, etc.
They are 3rd party software, when it says, "You must have FlashPlayer" - the software needed to play swf files.
The do not let you alter and manage each individual frame, limiting you to the mainframe of that software.
Flash on the other hand lets you manage all that things associated with that file that you can import, but only as frames. It is the same when you import GIF's or avi files.
Therefore they cannot be the same, yes, they can output the same thing, but they are completely different in terms of use, and infrastructure.
I have used Swish, and that as far as I have been able to manage, does not let you alter each frame individually when it comes to making prewritten movie tweens.