The Macromedia Dashboard

The Macromedia Dashboard brings the Macromedia Flash developer community to your fingertips. Built into Flash 5 (Help > Macromedia Dashboard), the Dashboard is updated twice a month, once at the beginning of the month and again mid-month. To update the Dashboard contents on your computer, you need to have an Internet connection. Some of the items you can find on the Dashboard include the following:

Interesting Sites. The featured Flash site changes every couple of weeks. See what the best of the best are doing.
News. Current news about what's happening with Macromedia and Flash.
Community. Links to mailing lists and the Macromedia Online Forums, how to find User Groups and Authorized Training Locations, and resource Web sites for Flash developers.
Support. Links to popular Tech Notes, the Flash Support Center, and the Developer's Support Network. When you register your copy of Flash, you are eligible for 90 days of free technical support ”that's 90 days from your first request for assistance. You also can e-mail technical support from here.
Resources. Extend Flash by checking out the offerings on the Flash Exchange. You also can get information about Macromedia University. You also can find links to Tech Notes about where to find Flash books and sound files for use with Flash. In addition, you can sign up for the monthly Macromedia EDGE Newsletter.
Generator. Online Generator resources and the Generator Support Center.
Feedback. Tech Note on how to send feedback to the Flash and Dashboard teams . If you have content you'd like to submit for inclusion on the Dashboard, you can get more information about how to do that here.
Flash Player. Download the latest Flash player. Boss asking you about the latest Player Adoption Statistics? You can find them here!
Update/Auto Update. You can choose to have the Dashboard update automatically, or you can choose to update it on your own schedule. Either way, you'll need an Internet connection to connect to the update server.

Warning

Do not open the Dashboard and leave it running in the background while you work in Flash. There is an undocumented feature in the Dashboard that will cheerfully run your CPU usage up to 100 percent while you're not looking.

Summary

You've covered a lot of territory in this chapter! By now, you should have a pretty good feel for the new features in Flash 5. You've been through the basics of the interface and drawing tools, and you took a quick look at the timeline and its components . You're ready for the next step.

The next chapter guides you through some of the ways you can customize Flash 5 to better fit your workflow.

Chapter 2. Customizing Flash 5 to Suit Your Workflow

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One of the terrific things about Flash 5 is that it is so customizable. In fact, you have a whole host of options and settings that you can change to make Flash work for you. In this chapter, you'll take a look at the following:

Changing the default Movie Properties. Every time you open Flash, you get a new empty movie with specific dimensions and characteristics. In this chapter, you learn how to modify those settings to better suit your needs.
Working with the panel sets. You can make the new panels in Flash work for you. In this chapter, you learn how to create custom panel sets and how to hide the panels when you don't need them.
Setting preferences inside Flash. By setting preferences, you can customize the way Flash works. For example, if you don't like the Flash 5 selection style, you can switch it back to the Flash 4 style. If you've never played around with the preferences before, now is the time to do it.
Creating and using custom keyboard shortcuts. If you've already memorized a set of keyboard shortcuts from another graphics program such as Macromedia's FreeHand or Fireworks, or Adobe's Photoshop or Illustrator, don't despair ”you can use those shortcuts inside Flash as well. You also can create your own custom shortcuts.

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