Chapter 7. Working with Symbols

7. Working with Symbols

In previous chapters, you learned to create and edit static graphics. Ultimately, you'll want to animate those graphics, and you're likely to want to use the same graphic over and over again. You may want an element to appear several times in one movie, or you may want to use the same element in several movies. You can save graphic elements for reuse by storing them in a library; to do that, you first turn the graphics into symbols.

Every Flash document has its own library; the library contains the symbols you create and other assets, reusable elements that you import for use in your movie (see the sidebar "Library Terminology").

In this chapter, you learn to work with libraries and to create symbols that are static graphics. In later chapters, you learn about creating animated symbols and buttons (see Chapters 11 and 12), working with bitmapped graphics (see Chapter 14), and adding sounds (see Chapter 15).

Library Terminology

The general term for an item stored in a Flash library is an asset. More specifically, graphics created with Flash's drawing tools and stored in a library are called symbols; fonts stored in a library are called font symbols; and imported sounds, video clips, and bitmaps (which are always stored in a library) are just called sounds, video clips, and bitmaps. Flash refers to each copy of a library asset that you use in a movie as an instance of that asset.