Printing from the Flash Player Contextual Menu

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You can use the Print command in the Flash Player's contextual menu (called the shortcut menu in Windows) to print the contents of any Flash movie. This command only prints frames in the main movie's timeline and does not let you print any color effects. You can activate the Flash Player contextual menu by right-clicking (Windows) or Control-clicking (Macintosh) in the Flash movie.

1. Open map5.fla from the FlashTFS folder.

   

   You should have created map5.fla in Lesson 9. If you can't find the file in the FlashTFS folder on your hard drive, use the file in the Lesson 10/Starting folder on the CD-ROM. Open the file and save it in the FlashTFS folder on your hard drive before you continue.

2. Choose Control > Test Movie.

   

   You can only access the Flash Player contextual menu when the movie is playing in the Flash Player. When you choose Control > Test Movie, Flash exports a copy of the Flash movie and plays it back in the Flash Player. The Flash Player plays the movie in the Test Movie window.

3. Right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Macintosh) in the movie. Choose Print from the contextual menu.

   

   Take a look at some of the commands available in this menu. Choosing Print opens your system's default Print dialog box. The following figures illustrate the Print dialog boxes for Windows 2000, Mac OS 9.x, and Mac OS X.

   

   

   

4. When the Print dialog box opens, use the default settings to print the Flash movie.

   

   Try to print the movie in color if you can.

   When you look at the printed movie, you should see the content on the main timeline of the movie. It probably doesn't look very good, and may be somewhat distorted on the page.

   Only one page should have printed, as you have only one frame in the main timeline of the movie. See what happens if you add another frame to the main timelinejust be sure to choose File > Revert before you continue to the next exercise.

   You don't have to save your file before you continue, as you haven't actually made any changes to the movie. Keep map5.fla open for the next exercise.

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