What s New in Flash MX

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What's New in Flash MX

There have been a multitude of improvements made to Flash MX. We'll look at some of the changes made to the Flash workflow.

Timeline

The Timeline can be collapsed without removing it from the Stage. A new option, Insert Layer Folder icon, has been added, and you'll see that there are icons for Insert Layer and Insert Motion Guide as well. A new preference (Edit ® Preferences) has been added where you can change the default frame selection to span-based selection for the Timeline, which selects an entire frame sequence.

Toolbox

The Toolbox is divided into several categories with the drawing tools on top. There are two new tools called the Fill Transform tool and the Free Transform tool. The Free Transform tool includes an envelope option to warp a non-grouped shape. Some of the tools, when selected, have additional modifiers you can see in the Options area of the Toolbox and/or in the Property inspector. The Toolbox works in tandem with the Property inspector.

Property inspector

The Property inspector is new to Flash MX and is very similar in function to the one found in Dreamweaver. As a tool or object on the Stage is selected, the Property inspector changes to reflect that items properties. The Property inspector has replaced nine panels, which are Stroke, Fill, Character, Paragraph, Text Options, Instance, Effect, Frame, and Sound.

Actions panel

There are two modes to work with actions in Flash, Normal and Expert. In Flash MX there have been changes made to both modes. In Expert mode some of the notable changes include a keyboard shortcut of F2 to launch the Output dialog box, the ability to navigate to other scripts (symbols and frames containing ActionScript), insert a target path (Relative or Absolute), check syntax, autoformat, which applies formatting rules to your ActionScript. The Actions panel also offers a built-in context-sensitive ActionScript dictionary and gives you access to debug options (with breakpoints) and lets you view line numbers.

Components

The Smart Clips of Flash 5 have evolved into even smarter components in Flash MX. Components are complex reusable movie clips. These components can be dragged directly into your movie. You can also change the appearance of the components. Some of the UI components that ship with Flash MX are CheckBox, ComboBox, ScrollBar, and more. There are more available at the Flash Exchange.

Distribute to layers

You can now distribute multiple objects into a different layer if you'd like by choosing Modify ® Distribute to layers. This comes in handy if you break text apart that you want to animate.

Other features include:

• Bookmarking and Back. By using named anchors a user can now use the browser Back button and bookmark a Flash page.

• Accessible. There is now a new panel accessed by choosing Window ® Accessibility, which allows you to make your movie accessible.

• New modifiers for the Transform tool such as distort and envelope.

• Unicode and UTF8 and vertical text.

• True embedded video codec in the Flash player.

• Standard size templates for things such as banners, ads, and mobile devices.

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