Section 1.7. Opening a Flash File


1.7. Opening a Flash File

Download the file rolling_ball.fla and save it on your computer. Then launch Flash (Section 1.1), and choose File Open (the Start page goes away automatically). When the Open dialog box appears, navigate to the file you just downloaded and then click Open . Flash shows you the animation on the Stage, surrounded by the usual Timeline, toolbars , panels, and (at the bottom) the Property Inspector. It should look like Figure 1-18.


Tip: To run the example animation, either press Enter or select Control Play.


Tip: If you don't see the Property Inspector, you can display it by selecting Window Properties Properties or by typing Ctrl+F3.
1.7.1. Exploring the Property Inspector

The Property Inspector appears automatically beneath the Stage when you open a new document. As shown in Figure 1-18, it displays specific information about whatever object you've selected on the Stage. Such details can be helpful when you want to recreate an object precisely in another program, or incorporate your finished animation into a Web page you've already created. For example, the Size button shows your animation's dimensions (550 x 200 pixels, say) which is information you need if you want to place your animation in a Web page by hand. (In Chapter 14, you'll learn how to tell Flash to create a simple Web page that includes your animation so you don't have to do this work by hand.)

To see how it works, click the letter "F" in the rolling _ball.fla example animation. On the Property Inspector, you'll see the following:

  • Height and width . The pixel dimensions of this "F" are 10.4 wide x 13.0 high.

  • Color . The color of this letter is black.

By typing in new values or changing a setting, you can edit the selected object. To see the Property Inspector in action, you'll use it to resize the Stage itself, described next .

1.7.2. Resizing the Stage

In addition to just inspecting the properties of a selected object, you can also edit those properties using the Property Inspector. In Flash, the size of your Stage is the actual finished size of your animation, so setting its exact dimensions is one of the first things you do when you create an animation, as you'll see in the next chapter. But you can resize the Stage at any time.

Here's how to change the size of your Stage:

  1. Click the Selection tool and then click on a blank area of the Stage (to make sure nothing on the Stage is selected) .

    Alternatively, you can click the Selection tool and then chose Edit Deselect All.

  2. Click in the width box (which currently reads 800 px) and type 720 px . Click in the height box and change it from 600 px to 80 px . Click OK when you're done .

    Flash accepts the new dimensions and resizes your Stage, as shown in Figure 1-19.


Tip: If you resize the Stage so big that you can't see the entire thing, check out the scrollbars Flash puts at the bottom and the right side of your work area. You can use them to scroll around and see everything.

1.7.3. Zooming In and Out

Sometime in your Flash career, you'll draw a picture so enormous you can't see it all on the Stage at one time. The scroll bars let you move around a big Stage, but they can't help you get a full overview. Next, you'll learn how to use the Zoom tools to pull back your view and see the entire animation at once. You can find these tools in the View section of the Tools panel. They let you zoom in, zoom out, and pan around the stage. You can even get in so close, you can modify your drawing pixel by pixel.

Figure 1-19. Because your Stage is your canvas, you'll want to change its size and shape depending on how you want your finished animation to look. For an across-the-top-of-a-Webpage banner ad, for example, you'll want a long, skinny stagesomewhere around 720 x 80 as shown here, depending on the size of your target screen. Any modification you make to the size of the Stage immediately changes the dimensions of the Stage itself as it appears in your workspace.

Here's how the Zoom tools work:

  1. Click the Zoom tool (the little magnifying glass) in the View section of the Tools panel .

    The tools panel usually sits at the left side of your screen (but you're free to move it, as described on Section 1.4.1). As you can see in Figure 1-20, when you click the Zoom tool, the Options section at the bottom of the panel changes to show only zoom- related buttons .

  2. Move your cursor, which now looks like a magnifying glass with a plus sign on it, to the area on the Stage that you want to zoom in on and then click .

    Flash enlarges the Stage and everything on it. The area where you clicked stays in full view.

  3. Click the Hand tool .

    Your cursor turns into a little hand.

  4. Click anywhere on the Stage and drag your cursor around .

    Flash moves the Stage beneath your cursor so you can get a better look at whatever section of your bigger-than-life drawing you're most interested in.

Figure 1-20. After you click the Zoom tool, each time you click your drawing, the Stage (which contains your drawing) appears larger. If it gets so big that you can't see the whole thing, click the Hand tool; then click the Stage again and drag to move the Stage around (as shown here).

1.7.4. Playing an Animation

Now that you've seen how to work on an animation while it's standing still, it's time for some action. After all, an animation by definition must move. Using the Controller toolbar, which you display by choosing Window Toolbars Controller (see the box on Section 1.7.5), you can play, pause, and rewind, much like a videotape or DVD. When you click Play on the Controller, your animation plays once through from beginning to end.

For finer control, you can use the Timeline's playhead to click through your animation frame by frame, like the slideshow of yore. Playhead is nothing more than a fancy term for currently selected frame . Click a frame, and Flash displays the red playhead rectangle to show that you've successfully selected that frame (see Figure 1-21). If you select Control Play to run your animation, your animation plays on the Stage, beginning with the selected frame.

Figure 1-21. You select a frame (specify a playhead position) the same way you select everything else in Flash: by clicking. In this example, the currently selected frame (playhead position) is the tenth frame. You can watch the playhead move from frame to frame by selecting Control Play. Dragging the playhead back and forth (called scrubbing) is an even quicker way to test portions of your animationand a fun way, too: dragging the playhead from right to left displays your frames in reverse order.

UP TO SPEED
Controlling Playback with the Controller

If you've ever used a video deck or a tape player, the six icons on the Controller toolbar look comfortingly familiar. In Flash, here's what each one does, from left to right as they appear onscreen:

Stop . Clicking this square icon stops playback.

Go to first frame . Clicking this icon rewinds your animation. That is, it moves the playhead back to Frame 1.

Step back one frame . Clicking this double-left-arrow icon moves the playhead back one frame. If the playhead is already at Frame 1, this button has no effect.

Play . Clicking this right-arrow runs your animation on the Stage. Playback begins at the current position of the playhead. In other words, playback begins with the frame you selected in the Timeline and runs either until the end of your animation or until you press the Stop button.

Step forward one frame . Clicking this double-right-arrow icon moves the playhead forward one frame (unless the playhead is already at the last frame).

Go to last frame . Clicking this icon fast-forwards your animation to the very end. That is, it sets the playhead to the last frame in your animation.

You can also access these six functions by choosing them from the Control menu in the menu bar.

Keep in mind that certain elements Flash shows you when you're testing on the Stagefor example, motion guide layers , which you learn about in Chapter 3don't appear in your finished animation. So while using the Controller panel is a great way to work the kinks out of your animation, it's no substitute for choosing Control Test Movie, which exports (compiles) your Flash document and shows you exactly what your audience will see.


1.7.5. Saving a File

Saving your work frequently in Flash is a good idea. You might think you'll remember how to recreate a particularly great drawing or animated sequence if the unthinkable happens and your computer crashes, but why take the chance? You've got better things to do with your time.

The minute you finish a sizable chunk of work, save your Flash file by following these steps:

  1. Select File Save As .

    The Save As window appears (Figure 1-22). Choosing Save As (instead of Save) lets you create a new version of the file rather than overwriting the old one. Saving a new version of a file is always a good idea when you're experimenting, since some experiments invariably end up not working and you want to drop back to the previous working version of your file.

  2. From the Save In pop-up menu, choose the file folder where you want Flash to save your file .

    If you like, you can skip this step. If you doand you're running Windows Flash assumes you want it to save your file in the My Documents folder. If you're running Mac, Flash assumes you want it to save your file in the Home Documents folder.

  3. Click Save .

    Flash saves your file using the location and file name you specified.

Figure 1-22. You have only to specify a name and location for your file the first time you save it. After that, all you have to do to save your file (including any changes you've made since the last time you saved it) is select File Save.

UP TO SPEED
Flash File Extensions

Flash gives each different type of file its own extension to help it (and you) tell files apart. For example, when you save a Flash document, Flash automatically appends the .fla file extension. Here's a quick rundown of the file extensions Flash uses when you tell it to save or export a file:

  • Flash document files and Flash form application files (.fla ). Flash form applications are HTML-like data entry forms you can create in Flash and hook up to a server on the back end to process the data that folks enter. This book doesn't cover Flash form applications.

  • ActionScript files (.as ). ActionScript files let script jockeys write ActionScript code by hand and attach it to their Flash documents at runtime, rather than stepping their way through Flash's build-a-script interface to include their ActionScript code directly into their Flash documents. (This book doesn't cover ActionScript files, but you will learn how to write Flash scripts of your own in Part 3.)

  • ActionScript Communication files (.asc ). Special ActionScript files that connect Flash animations to database back ends. This book doesn't cover ActionScript Communication files.

  • Flash JavaScript files (.jsfl ). Files that pass information from a Flash animation running in a Web browser to a JavaScript script. (JavaScript is a programming language built into Web browsers that Web developers can use in conjunction with HTML to create interactive Web pages.) This book doesn't cover Flash JavaScript files.

  • Flash project files (.flp ). If you need to create a large, complex Flash animation with a bunch of other people (for example, a corporate development team), you can use a Flash project file to keep track of all of the Flash documents, sound files, bitmaps, and other component files that make up that animation (including a copy of each version of the animation). This book doesn't cover Flash project files.

  • Flash runtime files (.swf, .exe, .hqx, and uncompressed Mac executable files with no file extension ). These published (compiled) files run in Flash Player (.swf), as an executable file that runs on Windows (.exe), as a standalone, self-extracting program on Mac (.hqx), and as a standalone, uncompressed program on the Mac (no file extension), respectively.





Flash 8
Flash Fox and Bono Bear (Chimps) (Chimps Series)
ISBN: 1901737438
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 126
Authors: Tessa Moore

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