Chapter 6. Saving and Reusing Graphic Elements

I l @ ve RuBoard

In the previous chapters, you learned to create and edit static graphics. Your ultimate goal will be to use those graphics in animated movies. And to reach that goal, you're likely to want to use items over again. You may want an element to appear several times in one movie, or you may want to use the same element in several movies. Macromedia Flash MX provides a container for storing graphics that makes it easy to do both. This container is called a library .

Every Flash document has its own library, where you can store the elements that go into a movie: text, sounds, video clips, animations, rollover buttons , bitmapped graphics, and vector graphics.

Library Terminology

The general term for an item stored in a Flash library is an asset. More specifically , graphics created with Flash's drawing tools and stored in a library are called symbols ; fonts stored in a library are called font symbols ; and sounds, video clips, and bitmaps (which are always stored in a library) are just called sounds , video clips , and bitmaps . Flash refers to each copy of a library asset that you actually use in a movie as an instance of that asset.

Flash's shared libraries let you share assets (including fonts) among movies. Sharing assets helps reduce the amount of material that must be downloaded to a user 's system before he or she can view your Flash movies.

In this chapter, you learn to work with libraries and to create symbols that are static graphics. You also learn about shared libraries and font symbols. In later chapters, you learn about creating animated symbols and buttons (see Chapters 11 and 13), working with bitmapped graphics (see Chapter 7), and adding sounds and video (see Chapter 14).

I l @ ve RuBoard