Changing Your Buttons

The last three buttons you created are copies (or instances) of the first button you created. If you use Macromedia Flash, you probably are familiar with symbols and how they work. The principle is much the same in Fireworks. The advantage of a symbol is the ease of changing the look of the buttons. Say, for example, that you don't like the color of the buttons when you place them on a Web page. If you had individual buttons, you would need to select each button and then make the change. Since your buttons are instances of the same symbol, you just need to change the original symbol, and then each instance is automatically changed: a real time-saver!

1.	Click the Original button and then double-click any button on the page. This opens the Button Editor. You can also double-click the button icon or the button image in the Preview pane of the library. Tip If you click the name of the button instead of the icon of the button in the Library list, the Symbol Properties dialog box opens instead of the Button Editor. You can then click Edit to open the Button Editor.
2.	Make your change to the button in the Button Editor. For this example, change the color of the rectangle in the Up state of the button to red.
3.	Click Done to close the Button Editor. All the buttons on the page are now red.
4.	Double-click one of the buttons again and reset the rectangle to black. For this lesson, you want the buttons black.