13.3. Testing in Flash PlayerFlash 8's Test mode shows you a closer approximation of how your animation will actually appear to your audience than testing on the Stage. When you fire up the Test Movie command, your animation plays in the Flash Player that comes with Flash 8. Test mode is your best bet if your animation contains movie clips, buttons , scenes, hidden layers , or actions, since it shows you all the parts of your animationnot just the parts currently visible on the Stage. Note: Motion paths don't appear when you test your animation in Flash Player, for good reason: Flash designed them to be invisible at runtime. If you want to see your motion paths in action, you need to test your animation on the Stage. To test your animation in Flash Player:
Note: The Flash Player's View options are described in the box on Section 13.6.1; Figure 13-13 acquaints you with Flash Player's Debug menu options. Figure 13-3. Normally, when you select Control Test Movie or Control Test Scene, Flash opens up Flash Player in its own window. To control playback, you have a couple of choices: You can choose options from the File, View, Control, and Debug menus, or you can right-click in the window if youre running Windows (Control-click if you're running Mac) and choose options from the context menus that appear.Note: Testing your animation in Flash Player gives you a great sense of what your audience will see. But factors such as connection speed and hardware differences come into play when you actually publish your animation, so you'll want to test your animation in a real-life production setting (using the same kind of computer, same connection speed, and same version browser as you expect your audience to use) before you go live (see Section 13.1.2). |