Subtitles of the Movie

In this chapter we are going to take a look at some of the new features found in Flash MX. One of the most helpful features I find for organizing my work on the timeline is the use of folders. You'll notice that just next to the create a new layer and add motion guide buttons is a new button in Flash MX known as the insert layer folder. Insert layer folder is great for organizing your timelines as you can see in this example above here, I have several different layers for the same type of object; for instance, the layer known as the logo scripts, animation logo text and logo backgrounds. This takes quite a bit of room vertically on my timeline and a lot of screen real estate. With the use of folders I am able to click on the new folder button and give it a name, in this case I'll call it "logo" and I can simply then click on all the different layers that have logo related objects and drag them into the folder. Notice they're offset now just a bit to the right and the nice thing is I can close and collapse this by just hitting the triangle. All my logo objects are now in the logo folder and I can repeat this process for other similar objects. I'll click on the NavBar section here, add a new folder, double click on it, call it NavBar and then simply select the layers that I want to include in that folder and just like that I've condensed my timeline. Let's also create one here for the text column to finish the example out; we'll call it "Text Columns," select these two layers and drag it into the folder. And just like that you can see how dramatically we've been able to compress the amount of size used for all of these layers. Keep in mind that when the swf file is finally exported, all the layers are flattened and folders are no longer maintained. This is a purely visual and organizational enhancement in Flash MX, but I find it to be quite useful. enhancement in Flash MX, but I find it to be quite useful.