Character—A conceptual character defined in a SWF file. This could be a shape, bitmap, sound, font or button. A character can be defined by more than 1 data tag. With additional tags adding information to the basic character definition.
Character id—A 16-bit number that is used to refer to a character that is defined in a file.
Depth Number—A 16-bit integer number that describes the stacking order of elements on the display list.
Dictionary—The current list of characters that have been defined in a file.
Display list—A list of the objects that are present on the screen at any given point in time.
Header—A file header is the header block for the file. A record header is the header for a tagged data block. There are two types of record headers: short and long. Short tags are used for blocks with 62 bytes of data or less and large tags can be used for any size block. See the Container Format section for details on the header structure.
Object—An object is an instance of a character on the display list.
Tag—A block of data in a .swf file that has a tag type and a length.