Subtitles of the Movie

Continuing my review of the various panels of the Flash CS3 Interface from the previous movie, we now get to the lesser known, but still very important panels. Starting with the Alignment Panel, right here in the middle of the Window Menu, the Alignment Panel lets you Align, Distribute and Match the sizes of various objects on the stage. Probably the best way to demonstrate the usefulness of this panel which I use all the time and introduce it early in my introductory Flash courses. Let me go ahead and highlight these three objects then use the Alignment Option here to align everything to the left, align everything center, align everything to the right, top. You can also distribute these elements once I've aligned those to the center I think I messed everything up so let's undo that last alignment right there. I can also align things to the stage, I'll demonstrate that in a minute. But the Distribute is also very useful, notice that with this command I've evened out the distribution of these buttons here so now using the Alignment and Distribute there, I've really set-up those buttons so that they are very nicely laid out on the page there. Notice that I can also align things to the stage, so for example, let's select this first button, click on To Stage and then let's align it to the middle of the stage. Let's take this button and align it to the bottom edge of the stage and so on. Next is the Color Panel, Window, Color below the Align. This let's you set your Color Chips, your Stroke and Fill, there's well, there's an RGB Slider here as well as a Color Palette which you can choose based on color. There's a type drop down that you choose, None, Solid, Linear, Radial or Bit Map. Here are your Radio Gradients here. Next is the Info Panel. This is another very useful Panel let's you see the dimensions of a selected object. That's the width and the height as well as it's current location on the stage. This is the number of pixels in the x direction from the left edge and the y direction is the number of pixels from the top edge of the stage so notice if I move this up into the left my numbers go down. And if I move it down into the right the numbers increase. This value here is where my cursor is currently located. So notice at this point is 00 or there about closely. Notice it when I move this button up here to the upper left hand corner it's registering the x and y location based on registration point of the object which is this circle here, notice it this number right there when I move my cursor it's gonna match the x, y position of that object, because it's measuring it from that registration point. It's also RGB values here. Next is the Transform panel, another panel that I use often and introduce early in my Flash courses. With the Transform Panel you can rotate objects just by typing in numbers. Let's go ahead and put 150 here and press the enter key, notice that it rotates that. It can also skew objects numerically. This is one of those tools where you want to experiment, you do have to press the enter key to get that to go. And the last panel that I want to show you, at least for now, is the Components Panel, accessed again from the Window Menu. The Components Panel is where you'll manage your components and add them to your Flash Project. Flash CS3 Professional Components are Movie Clips with parameters that allow you to modify their appearance and behavior. A Component can be a simple user interface control like I have here. Notice I've got buttons and checkboxes, labels and lists, scroll panes. Or, it can contain contents such as a scroll pane, a component can also be non-visual like a focus manager that allows you to control which object receives focus in an application. Components, using the Components Panel here enable you to build complex Flash applications even if you don't have an advanced understanding of Action Script, that's really the advantage of these things. Rather than creating custom buttons, combo boxes and lists. You can drag these components from the Components Panel here to add that functionality to your projects, notice that there is my combo box and there's a button. And here's even a progress bar, some kind of activity or action that's going on in your project you can get this working so that it shows you the progress of that action. You can also easily customize the look and feel of the components to suit your design needs. And that will conclude this quick overview of the Flash CS3 Interface. I've given you an overview of the timeline and the layer controls, the toolbar and introduction to the Properties Inspector. I concluded with a review of some of the more common and most used panels, including the Help Panel, the Library Actions and Behaviors Panel, the Movie Explorer, the Align Color and Info Panel as well as Transform and Components Panels. Now let me move on to the next section of the tutorial. Creating simple graphics and review the various tools for creating simple graphics within Flash CS3. Including, how to create Line Strokes and Fills, the Geometric Shape Tools, the Brush Tool, the Pencil and Line. Tools, the Object vs. Merge Drawing Models, the Pen Tool and all the other tools over here in the Toolbar which you'll use to create your simple graphics in Flash CS3.