Using the Timeline

In the Timeline, you have five size options for viewing frames and two options for previewing thumbnails of frame contents. A Flash movie may contain hundreds of frames; the Timeline's scroll bars enable you to access frames not currently visible in the Timeline window. You can also undock the Timeline so that it floats as a separate window and resize it to show more or fewer frames.

Figure 8.1 shows the Timeline for a movie with one layer and 15 defined frames.

Figure 8.1. Similar to an interactive outline, the Timeline represents each frame of your movie. Click any frame, and Flash displays its contents on the Stage.

To resize the Timeline's area

1.	Open a new Flash document. The default Timeline appears.
2.	Position the pointer over the gripper (the textured area on the left side of the title bar at the top of the Timeline).
3.	Click and drag away from the document window. A gray outline represents the Timeline window's new position.
4.	With the Timeline in its new location, release the mouse button. The Timeline turns into a separate resizable window. Tips To redock the Timeline, reverse the procedure. Click the Timeline's gripper, and drag toward the top of the document window. Position the pointer over the Edit Bar above the Stage, and release the mouse button. The Timeline redocks. For those who like a floating Timeline window, it can be a challenge not to redock the Timeline accidentally as you move windows around on your desktop. Windows users can prevent the Timeline from docking by holding down the Ctrl key as you drag.

The Mystery of Timeline Display

When you create a new Flash document, the Timeline displays a single layer with hundreds of little boxes. The first box has a solid black outline and contains a hollow bullet; the rest of the boxes are gray outlines. Every fifth box is solid gray. The box with the black outline and hollow bullet is a keyframe; the gray boxes are placeholder frames, or protoframes.

When you define a range of live frames by adding keyframes (see "Creating Keyframes," later in this chapter), the outline for the range of frames changes to black in the Timeline.

For a blank keyframe (one that has no content on the Stage), the Timeline displays a hollow bullet. For a keyframe that has content, the Timeline displays a solid bullet.

Any in-between frames that follow a keyframe that has content display that content on the Stage. In the Timeline, the last in-between frame of a span contains a hollow rectangle. If you've set Frame View to Tinted Frames (the default), the in-between frames with content also have a tinted highlight in the Timeline.

To view frames in the Timeline at various sizes

• In the Timeline, from the Frame View menu, choose a display option (Figure 8.2).
  
  

  Figure 8.2. The Timeline's Frame View pop-up menu lets you control the display of frames in the Timeline.

  

  
  Flash resizes the frame representations in the Timeline to reflect your choice. Figure 8.3 shows some of the frame views available.
  
  

  Figure 8.3. Flash can display the frames in the Timeline in a variety of sizes, from Tiny to Large. You can also preview the contents of each frame in the Timeline.