Subtitles of the Movie

Continuing my overview of the Flash Workspace, I just demonstrated the various preset Workspace settings, which you can access via the Window Workspace menu. You've also got another menu right here, a drop-down menu at the top with all of your Workspace presets: Animator, Classic, Debug, Designer, Developer, Essentials as well as options for creating new workspaces and managing your workspaces. Notice that there is the Test Workspace that I created earlier. Let's go ahead and leave it in the Classic Workspace and now let me review the major Flash Workspace elements starting with a Timeline. Timeline here in the Classic view is at the top, this controls all the elements in a project file including Layers, Frames, the Playhead and the Status Bar. The Playhead is this red tall rectangle here. And that shows me the current time. This is called the current time indicator or the Playhead, shows me what is going on here in the stage at that particular time. Much of what I'll be reviewing in later movies will involve the Timeline. Next, we have the stage. This displays your animations images and other content. It's the only part of the Flash Workspace that will be visible to users after you publish or export a finished project. Next, we have the Stage Pasteboard, this is the light gray area to the right and to the left as well as above and below the stage. The contents of the Stage Pasteboard are not visible to users when you export or publish your projects. You can place objects on here and then animate them onto the stage. They appear to enter and exit from off-stage, that is what is happening here with the Òshish-kabobÓ little skewers there as well as the baby blocks. Notice that they are parked off-stage here in the Stage Pasteboard and then as the movie plays they come in from off-stage. You can also store objects with no graphic representation here, such a scripts or data, keeping your stage uncluttered. Next, we have the edit bar, right here. This displays the current location inside the project file including the name of the current scene. It also provides controls for editing scenes and symbols that lets you change the magnification here in the zoom box. Let's go ahead and zoom in to 400 percent and let's zoom back out to 25 percent. 100 percent. Here are the Scene, Edit Scene Ð notice that I only have one scene there, but if I had additional scenes, I would have more options there as well as the objects here. And I can scan right in to the objects using this content drop down. Let's go back to Scene One and set this to 100 percent. Notice also if I double click on something here Ð let's go ahead and unlock all of this by clicking on this lock symbol. Here there is a show or hide all elements as well on the Timeline there, so it's Ð go ahead and double click on something and notice it now, I'm in the baby objects, so this Edit bar is very, very important. Be sure to keep an eye out here because this is one of the best ways to get your bearings in Flash in terms of where you are and most importantly, how to get back to the main timeline. That's like on Scene One and notice that I'm back here. Likewise, if I click on one of the skewers there or the bead strings. It tells me where I'm at and I can go back to Scene One. Next, we have the Toolbar. In Classic Workspace it's over here on the left, but if we go to the Essentials Workspace it's going to be over here to the right. So I will try to work mostly in the Classic Workspace so that everything kind of stays consistent. The Toolbar is over here to the left. I can notice Undock this and get different numbers of columns and rows here. I can also resize this. Probably this is the configuration that I like that best, is this double column Toolbar that is free floating so that I can move it anywhere I need it, including over there to the left. Notice that here in the Toolbar, some of the tools have a little black triangles in the lower right hand corner, that indicates that that is an expansion, you can expand the option to pick out the Pen Tool, the Add Anchor Point Tool. Here in the Rectangle Tool as well I also have the Oval Tool, the Rectangle Primitive, the Oval Primitive and the Polystar Tool. More on these Ð some of these tools, later. Brush Tool. Underneath that is the Spray Brush Tool. So just keep an eye out on those little icons in the lower right hand corner to let you know that there are additional options underneath the one presently visible. Next is the all important Property Inspector. This is a little bit new in this CS4 version of Flash in that it's a little bit more of a pop-up window or menu here that can also be resized. Notice that if I minimize it I get a scroll bar here. I can also detach this from the interface so that it's also a free floating window here. There are controls at the top to close it. To bring it back, just choose Window, Properties Ð this is something that you will probably always want to keep open and what is kind of nice is that in the Classic view, it kind of anchors out here Ð to the right. I can minimize it or maximize it as well as shrink this down. Perhaps the easiest thing to do is go back here to Classic view and reset Classic and that brings it back to here. And now notice that I just have this tab that's available here, so if I click on the Properties tab there, it will bring it here to the right. Notice also that depending on what I have selected, the Property Inspector will change. So that is the properties for this group. That is the properties for the document since I clicked on the background there, let's go back to Scene One. And notice for example if I choose the Text Tool, it's going to give me Properties for that Text Tool including Character, Family and then Paragraph here. Anti-alias Formatting, Spacing, Margins and so on. And if I choose the Block Arrow Tool or the Selection Tool, and click on other elements, it gives me the properties for those elements. For example, if I draw out a simple rectangle, it gives me the properties for that simple shape. Likewise, if I were to click on an audio file or video file, it would give me properties for that media type, including properties such as Position and Size, Fill and Stroke and so on. Now as you can see from the Window menu, Flash has a lot of windows and panels. Every element seems to have its own panel and it can make you kind of dizzy at first, so let me move on to the next movie and review some of the more important of the panels here under the Window menu.