User manual MACROMEDIA FLASH 8-GETTING STARTED WITH FLASH

[. . . ] Getting Started with Flash Trademarks 1 Step RoboPDF, ActiveEdit, ActiveTest, Authorware, Blue Sky Software, Blue Sky, Breeze, Breezo, Captivate, Central, ColdFusion, Contribute, Database Explorer, Director, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash, FlashCast, FlashHelp, Flash Lite, FlashPaper, Flash Video Encoder, Flex, Flex Builder, Fontographer, FreeHand, Generator, HomeSite, JRun, MacRecorder, Macromedia, MXML, RoboEngine, RoboHelp, RoboInfo, RoboPDF, Roundtrip, Roundtrip HTML, Shockwave, SoundEdit, Studio MX, UltraDev, and WebHelp are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Macromedia, Inc. and may be registered in the United States or in other jurisdictions including internationally. Other product names, logos, designs, titles, words, or phrases mentioned within this publication may be trademarks, service marks, or trade names of Macromedia, Inc. or other entities and may be registered in certain jurisdictions including internationally. [. . . ] The Current Selection menu indicates the tool (or tools) currently assigned to the selected location in the Tools panel. If more than one tool is assigned to one location in the Tools panel, a small arrow appears in the lower-right corner of the tool. This arrow indicates that additional tools are present in a pop-up menu. The same keyboard shortcut functions for all tools in the pop-up menu. 2. NO T E N OT E Click a tool in the Tools panel image or use the arrows to cycle through the tools to specify the location to which you want to assign another tool. To add a tool to the selected location, select the tool in the Available Tools list and click the Add button. To remove a tool from the selected location, select the tool in the Current Selection scroll list and click the Remove button. Click OK to apply your changes and close the Customize Tools panel dialog box. 3. 4. 5. To restore the default Tools panel layout: Click Restore Default in the Customize Tools panel dialog box. Using the grid, guides, and rulers Flash can display rulers and guides that help you draw and lay out objects precisely. You can place guides in a document and snap objects to those guides, or turn on the grid and snap objects to it. You can also snap objects to other objects or to pixels, or align objects using specified snap tolerance boundaries. For more information, see "Snapping" in Using Flash. Getting to know the workspace 69 Using rulers When rulers are displayed, they appear along the top and left sides of the document. You can change the unit of measure used in the rulers from the default of pixels to some other unit. When you move an element on the Stage with the rulers displayed, lines indicating the element's dimensions appear on the rulers. To display or hide rulers: Select View > Rulers. To specify the rulers' unit of measure for a document: Select Modify > Document, and then select a unit from the Ruler Units menu at the lower-left side of the dialog box. Using guides You can drag horizontal and vertical guides from the rulers onto the Stage when the rulers are displayed. You can also snap objects to guides, and change the guide color and snap tolerance (how close objects must be to snap to a guide). Draggable guides appear on the Stage only when the Timeline in which they were created is active. You can clear all the guides in the current editing mode--documentediting mode or symbol-editing mode. If you clear guides in documentediting mode, all the guides in the document are cleared. If you clear guides in symbol-editing mode, all the guides in all symbols are cleared. For more information, see "Using guide layers" on page 66. To display or hide the drawing guides: Select View > Guides > Show Guides. If the grid is visible and Snap to Grid is turned on when you create guides, guides will snap to the grid. N OT E 70 Flash Basics To turn snapping to guides on or off: Select View > Snapping > Snap to Guides. Snapping to guides takes precedence over snapping to the grid in places where guides fall between grid lines. N OT E NO TE To move a guide: 1. With the Selection tool, click anywhere on the ruler and drag the guide to the desired place on the Stage. To remove a guide: With guides unlocked, use the Selection tool to drag the guide to the horizontal or vertical ruler. For information on locking and unlocking guides, see the following procedure. To lock guides: Select View > Guides > Lock Guides. You can also use the Lock Guides option in the Edit Guides (View > Guides > Edit Guides) dialog box. For more information, see the following procedure. To set guide preferences: 1. Select View > Guides > Edit Guides and do any of the following: For Color, click the triangle in the color box and select a guide line color from the palette. Select or deselect Snap to Guides to turn snapping to guides on or off. [. . . ] You can use the Property inspector to specify these settings. To define document properties: 1. If the Property inspector isn't open, select Window > Properties > Properties. If the Property inspector is not fully expanded, click the white triangle in the lower-right corner. In the Document Properties dialog box, enter the following values: Width: 360 Height: 240 Create a new Flash document 141 4. Click OK. 5. Save your work. For more information about setting document properties, see "Creating or opening a document and setting properties" in Using Flash. Add a media component Next, you will add a media playback component to the Stage. This component will contain the video display and provide playback controls. A BO UT . . . About components Components in Flash are prebuilt objects that you can use in your own Flash documents. [. . . ]