Workspace

At the top of the work environment, we find the “Application bar”. On the right side of the “Application bar”, we have the minimize, maximize, and close buttons.

 

To the left of these buttons, we have the “Switch to workspace” and a search box.

What the first one does has already been explained to you in Lesson 1 of this course.

On the right side of the “Application bar”, we have the “Flash” logo. When we click it, it opens a drop-down menu with the same options.

Under the “Application bar”, we have the menu bar. As in any application, in “Flash” menubar also unfolds a sub menu with various commands when we choose any of the options in the menubar.

Under the menubar, we find the different pages of the opened document windows. When you have opened multiple “Flash” files, they appear as tabs. Navigating between the different files is done by selecting the tab.

Under the selected tabs we selected the “Document window”. The “Document window”, or rather the area, consists of a white portion (1), also called the “Stage”, and a gray part (2).

The work is always a rectangular area in which we place the graphic content when you create a “Flash” document.  Everything we place in the white area falls within the visual field, and will be included in the “Flash” movie that we will publish later.

Everything we place in the gray area is outside the field, and will not be included in the “Flash” movie.

Compare it with the shooting of a film or theater. Everything that is placed on the “Stage” appears in the film, and everything placed on the gray area, happens behind the scenes.

To the right of the “Stage” we find the open panels.

Standard panels that are opened are the “Properties” and “Library” panels.

By double-clicking the downward-pointing arrow at the top of the panel, you can enable or expand.

The same applies to the tool bar, which we have found in addition to the panels.

We will see more on the toolbar in the next lesson but, let me start by talking about the “Properties Panel”.

 

The “Properties panel”

Depending on what’s selected in the “Stage”, information and settings are displayed on the selected object in the “Properties panel”.  This object can be text, a symbol, a form, a bitmap, a video, anything really, even frames.

If there is nothing selected, click an empty spot on the “Stage”, then the “Properties panel” displays the settings of the document you are creating.

The “Properties panel” divided into two parts.

In the upper part is, “Publish” where you will find the settings used when we “Publish” our movies.

This can always be changed by pressing the button “Edit” (1) button under the “Publish” section.

In the lower part of this panel we find the settings that relate to the playback speed (“FPS” – “Frames Per Second”), the dimensions of the movie (size), and the background color of the movie.

You can change the “FPS” and the background color individually, but you can also use these settings at once by pressing the button “Edit” (2) below. This will open the “Document Properties” dialog where you can set the size, background color change, and the frame rate.  This aside, the frame rate determines the speed at which the movie plays.

The same “Document Properties” dialog box, can also be accessed by clicking on “Modify” in the menu bar and select “Document” in the drop-down menu.

 

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