Summary

• Movie Clips are the key to Flash interactivity. Each Movie Clip has its own independent timeline and playback.

• Each Movie Clip instance needs a unique name on any given timeline. You cannot reuse the same name on other Movie Clips on a timeline. You can, however, use the same instance name on different timelines.

• There are two types of target paths for Movie Clips: absolute and relative. Absolute paths start from the Main Timeline and end with the targeted instance name. Relative paths start from the timeline that's issuing the action(s) and end with the targeted instance name.

• The slash and dot notations are formats for writing either absolute or relative paths. The Slash notation is considered deprecated, and should be avoided unless you are authoring for Flash Player 4 or earlier. The dot notation was introduced in Flash 5 and has a more complete syntax for programming in ActionScript.

• The Insert Target Path dialog box can help you build the path to a Movie Clip instance, to use with another action.

• Behaviors can be used across timelines. For example, an instance of a sound created by a behavior on the Main Timeline can be accessed by another behavior located within another Movie Clip instance.