Subtitles of the Movie

If you're new to the Flash application review this section of the tutorial thoroughly, it'll give you the big picture look at the Flash CS3 interface. I begin this section of the tutorial with an overview of the main interface elements, the timeline, the stage, the stage paste board and the various Flash panels. This will be a shallow quick overview since we will be reviewing everything I cover here in more detail as we progress through the course. On the other hand if you're a veteran of Flash feel free to skin through this material as a basic interface of Flash CS3 hasn't really been changed much. Once you've quickly skimmed through this material then move on to the next section creating simple graphics. Let me start my review up here at the top of the interface with the timeline, the timeline controls all the elements in a project including the layers, frames and the play head, including the status bar up here in the upper left hand corner. I can add more layers to this timeline by clicking on the add layer button. Notice that I get these additional layers labeled one, two, three and four and so on. The timeline by default is docked above the stage but you can undock and move the timeline to any location on screen by clicking the patterned area here in the upper left hand corner and dragging it off of that dock. I can redock it by dragging it up into the upper left hand corner until you see the solid black lines there and undock it by just simply removing it, notice that I can also dock the timeline to the left like so. Although I prefer to keep my timeline by default up here at the top the stage is this white area in the middle, let me move my property inspector here. This displays your animations, images, and other content, it's the area visible to users after you publish or export a finished project, the user will only see this white area, they won't see the gray, the timeline, the toolbars, the property inspector or any of the other panels. Next we get to the stage paste board, the stage paste board is the light gray area around the stage; notice that there is paste board above, below, to the right and also to the left of the stage. The contents of the stage paste board are not visible to users when you export or publish your project. So you can place objects over here in the paste board and animate them onto the stage so that they appear to enter and exit from off stage. And also store objects with no graphic representation over here in the paste board such as scripts or data. That's keeping your stage uncluttered. Next we have the edit bar, the edit bar displays your current location inside the project file, right now I am in scene one, this will include the name of the current scene and the name of the object. Notice if I'm open up my library here I want to Flash those panels and double click on symbol one there, the edit bar tells me that I'm edit mode of symbol one. I can go back to scene one by clicking on the edit bar here. The label on the edit bar scene one, the edit bar also provides controls that let you change the magnification using the zoom box over here. You can zoom into the stage or zoom out, so there's the stage at 200 percent. Let me go ahead and create a graphic here and now let's zoom in to 400 percent, 800 percent or zoom out to 25 percent. Also there's commands for showing everything. Notice that the object now fills my view port or show fit in the frame there; fit the stage in my frame. This edit bar will change location depending on whether the timeline is docked or undocked so be sure to keep an eye out here as this is one of the best ways this edit bar of getting your bearings in Flash in terms of where you are and how to get back to the main timeline on scene one. Let me now move on to the next movie and review the timeline in more detail.