Chapter 1. The Flash Authoring Tool

1. The Flash Authoring Tool

Before you get started creating projects in Macromedia Flash 8, it's helpful to take a look around the authoring environment and begin to recognize and manipulate its components. When you open Flash for the first time, you'll see the Flash Start page. This page acts as a gateway to many documents and operations in Flash. When you open a Flash document, you enter the Flash authoring environment. Each Flash document consists of four basic items: the Timeline, a record of every frame, layer, and scene in your movie; the Edit Bar, which displays identifying text and menus for choosing symbols and scenes to work on; the Stage, the actual area in which your movie displays; and the Pasteboard, extra work space that surrounds the Stage. The Stage and Pasteboard are present when you edit a document. You can collapse or close the Timeline and hide the Edit Bar, and you can open any combination of other panels and tools that you need to work with your Flash content.

What does the Flash authoring environment look like? And how do you access tools and different views? This chapter presents a quick tour: subsequent chapters explain in more detail what's what as you get into using each element.