Correct. Flash “source” files (used by Macromedia Flash and then Adobe Flash) were binary .fla files that were impossible to manage with source-control. The .swf files (from the original name: Shockwave Flash) were the “compiled” output from Flash’s .fla source files. Flash’s dialect of JavaScript (ActionScript) from .fla files (and later .as files) were compiled to a compact bytecode format, along with compact binary representations of Flash’s own vector art files, animation paths, and optimised JPEG and PNG images (IIRC Flash supported alpha channels in JPEG long before official support was added to JFIF).
SWF is a very clever and optimised format - it’s amazing what they fit into the minuscule Flash runtime of yesteryear when it was only around 300KB in size IIRC. It’s a shame there *still* isn’t an approachable replacement tool for non-experts for making cartoon-style animations and groundbreaking interactive games in HTML+JS yet (e.g. Fault-Line: http://www.nitrome.com/games/faultline/ )
