Gradients in all versions of Flash

I have a question concerning the use of gradients in all versions of Flash. (My only experience is with Flash MX).

I was sifting through the Flash 5 tutorials on kirupa.com when I found this tutorial: http://www.kirupa.com/developer/flash5/antialiasing.htm. It appears as though Kirupa’s example, a green letter “A” character, features some sort of gradient.

Can anyone explain to me how it is possible to recreate this kind of effect in Flash MX? Did Kirupa employ a graphic that was created in another program or was this character created using the textbox tool in Flash?

I appreciate the help!

Matt