Finding Help

Flash has a very sophisticated help system. The Help panel has a search feature, a drop-down list of categories, expandable/collapsible categories, and a pane to display all the information you have requested. You can also check for updates by clicking the Update button at the upper-right of the panel. Most people forget about documentation, but here you're reminded about it because the documentation often has the answers to many of your questions.

Flash Help is extracted from a number of "books" that come with the program, including the following:

• Features

• Tutorials & Samples

• ActionScript 2.0

• Components

• Extending

• Language Reference (ActionScript and Components)

• Flash Lite

• 3rd Party

1.	Select Help > Flash Help to open the Help panel. Take a moment to explore the different categories of the Flash help system.
2.	Click the Update button to check for documentation updates. This works only if you have a live connection to the Internet. Flash will communicate with Macromedia's servers to see whether there have been any updates to the Flash documentation set. If so, you are prompted to download and install any updates. Tip It's a good idea to check for documentation updates on a regular basis.
3.	Enter a term in the search field, such as brush, and click Search to view the results. Flash searches its documentation for entries related to your search string and displays them in the Table of Contents area. Click any of the results to view the documentation related to your search.
4.	From the Help drop-down list, select Flash Support Center. This opens a browser to Macromedia's online Flash support page, in which you can find articles, tips, and FAQs related to Flash. When you can't find what you want in the documentation, don't forget to look onlinew (in particular, the Macromedia website).