Section 13.3. Testing in Flash Player


13.3. Testing in Flash Player

Flash 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:

  1. Select Control Test Movie .

    The export dialog box in Figure 13-2 appears, followed by your animation running in Flash Player (test window) similar to the one in Figure 13-3.

    Figure 13-2. When you see this dialog box, you know Flash is exporting your animation and creating an .swf file. If you've tested this particular animation before, Flash erases the .swf file it previously created and replaces it with the new one. Finishing an export can be fast or slow depending on the size and complexity of your animation and your computer's processing speed and memory.
  2. To control playbackto stop the animation and then rewind it, for examplechoose options from the Control menu .

    In you're running Windows, the Control menu appears in Flash Player; on a Mac, you get the Control menu in Flash 8 itself. (In Windows you can also see the Control menu in Flash itself if you turn on tabbed viewing in Preferences. See the box on Section 13.4 for details.)

  3. To close Flash Player, select File Close or click the X in the upper-right (Windows) or upper-left (Mac) corner of the window .


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).



Flash 8
Flash Fox and Bono Bear (Chimps) (Chimps Series)
ISBN: 1901737438
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 126
Authors: Tessa Moore

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