Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
The Macromedia Flash MX 2004 Tutorial (Macromedia, 2004) provides this
condensed version of the important components in the Flash interface.
•
The
Stage
is the area that represents how your published content will
appear.
•
The
Timeline
, above the stage, displays a layer for the art and a layer for
the effects in the document.
•
Layers
allow stacking content within the timeline.
•
Scenes
act like scenes in a play or movie, each piece can be acted out
separately and collectively the scenes encompass the movie.
•
Panels
in Flash assist you in working with and assigning attributes to the
document or to objects on the stage.
•
Tool Palette
provides raster and vector based drawing tools.
•
The
properties inspector
allows you to view and change attributes of a
selected object. The Properties inspector changes to display information
about the tool or asset you are working with, offering quick access to
frequently used features. (Macromedia Flash MX 2004 Tutorial)
•
The
library panel
stores reusable items such as graphics, sound, and
video clips. When you want to use a library item, you simply drag it from
the library panel to the stage. (Macromedia Flash MX 2004 Tutorial)
The
stage
is the rectangular area where you place graphic content, including
vector art, text boxes, buttons, imported bitmap graphics or video clips, and so
on. The stage in the Flash authoring environment represents the rectangular
space in the Macromedia Flash Player where your Flash document is displayed
during playback. You can zoom in and out to change the view of the stage as
you work (Macromedia Flash MX 2004 Tutorial). Typical sizes for the stage
are 550 x 400, the standard Web page sizes: 640 x 480, 1024 x 768, and Web
banner sizes: 468 x 60. You can create a Flash movie at any pixel size you
desire. You can set the stage color and movie frame rate to begin building your
movie.
Layers
in a document are listed in a column on the left side of the timeline.
Frames contained in each layer appear in a row to the right of the layer name.
The timeline header at the top of the timeline indicates frame numbers. The
play
head
indicates the current frame displayed on the stage (Macromedia Flash
MX 2004 Tutorial).
