Conclusion

Components can be incredibly valuable resources. While Macromedia hasn't set up components to be absolutely intuitive, you will likely find them easy enough to work with once you get in the practice of using them. When you get familiar with a few unique characteristics of components, you will see that they are like many of the other resources in Flash that you already work with. For example, you can drag and drop them from the library like any other symbol. You can also copy, paste, and duplicate the components easily. To adjust how they operate, you simply edit the parameters. However, the default interface for the Component Parameters panel leaves much to be desired. In the next chapter, we will look at components that utilize custom user interfaces for the panel. We will also look at several other features provided by Macromedia that can make it even easier to work with components.