Subtitles of the Movie

The timeline controls and displays the static and moving elements of a project over time in this movie. I review the main elements of the timeline as you proceed through the course, you will become very adapt at reading and using the timeline and to author your Flash projects. Let me start off with the zoom controls in the upper right hand corner of the timeline here. You can use the placement option to place the timeline above, below, to the left of the document or to the right of the document. I demonstrated how to drag and drop the timeline to these locations. You can also use this handy placement tool to place the timeline below. To the left. To the right. Notice if you place it to the left or to the right, you will need to expand out in a horizontal fashion, your timeline, which you can do by placing your mouse on the edge of the timeline. The default placement is above the document and you can also use the control here to vertically expand or contract the timeline. You also have some zoom controls over here to make your timeline tiny, notice how my key frames are there, the key frames are those rectangles with the solid circle in them. Tiny or small. Normal is what you will see in most of the Flash documentation and many of the Flash textbooks and learning manuals. We will show you the timeline here in normal resolution. There is medium resolution and there is also large zoomed-in resolution. Also got Preview mode that shows you the preview of the selected layer and also a preview in context, which shows you that layer in context with the other layers. Notice how the circle is now in real size there instead of showing it to you as it expands and contracts. And you go back now to Normal View. Also got the play head up here, it's the red rectangle at the top of the timeline. It indicates which frame in the timeline is currently displayed on the stage. Once you have two or more frames of artwork on the stage, you can click and drag the play head as I am doing here to move it to a specific frame. You can also Scrub, which is scanning through the timeline to quickly preview animations. It is a very common technique to make sure your animations are working as intended. Next we get to the layer controls, right here in the left center of the timeline and down here in the lower left hand corner. These layer controls let you add, organize, hide and lock layers. They also let you display the contents of layers as outlines. This is the outline mode right here, by clicking on that. Notice I get the outline of the circle. You can hide layers by clicking on the I column or you can lock layers by clicking on the Lock column. Notice that my timeline label is gone now. You can also add layers, by clicking on the insert layer icon there. You have an add motion guide, which I will cover later as well as layer folders, which let's you organize your layers. And then there is the delete layer icon, which lets you delete layers. The status bar I have reviewed previously is located at the base of the timeline, this handy bar gives you feedback about the current frame. The frame rate, the frames per second and the elapsed time of your movie right here. It also contains tools that let you perform onion-skinning, edit multiple frames, which I will cover in more detail later in the course. The toolbar over here under Window Tools, right there to the left by default, contains all the tools you will use for creating and editing your artwork, this is a very important component in Flash. Let me talk more about the toolbar in the next movie.