The Movie Explorer Interface

In Flash's default setup, the Movie Explorer is docked to the Action panel, so you can open the Movie Explorer by launching the Action panel and switching to the Movie Explorer tab. Alternately, you can choose Window > Movie Explorer from the Main menu. There are four main parts to the Movie Explorer window:

• Filtering buttons . This is the row of buttons at the very top of the Movie Explorer window. These buttons enable you to choose what you want to see in the Display list. From the left, they are as follows :

  • Show Text

  • Show Buttons, Movie Clips and Graphics

  • Show ActionScripts

  • Show Video, Sounds and Bitmaps

  • Show Frames and Layers

  • Customize Which Items to Show

• Find text box. Just below the Filtering buttons is the Find text box. You can search for any element of the movie by name by typing a string into the text box. You can search for a symbol name, an instance name, a font name , an ActionScript string, or a frame number. You also can search for Generator object names and name/value pairs. You learn more about Generator in the next chapter. The Find function acts as a filter for the items currently shown in the Display list. The filtering takes effect as soon as you begin typing. To restore the complete Display list, you have to clear all information from the Find text box.

• Display list. The main body of the Movie Explorer window is the Display list. The Display list shows the hierarchical listing of the movie contents based on which filters you have selected using the Filtering buttons or a custom filter (more on these to come).

• Status bar. The Status bar is the gray bar just below the Display list. When you select an item in the Display list, the full path to that item is shown in the Status bar.

In the next section, you take a look at how you can use some of the features of the Movie Explorer to make working with your Flash movie easier and more efficient.