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Chapter 1: Getting Acquainted with Flash CS5
You can access the same workspace features on the right side of the Menu
bar. It’s easy to choose a new workspace by just clicking the Workspace
drop-down list.
Staging your movies
The white box in the center of your screen is the Stage. Think of the Stage
as a movie screen where you place objects. You can place graphics and text
there and then animate them. Flash also plays back movies on the Stage.
Around the edge of the Stage is a gray area called the Pasteboard. You can
use the Pasteboard to store graphics that you plan to use soon but don’t
want on the Stage just yet. (For more permanent storage, use the Library,
as we explain in Chapter 2.) You can also store data and other nongraphical
content on the Pasteboard. Content that you put on the Pasteboard doesn’t
appear in your Flash movie.
Following a timeline
The Timeline window divides your movie into frames. Each frame represents
a tiny stretch of time, such as
1
⁄24 of a second. Creating a movie is simply a
matter of assembling frames, which are then quickly played in order.
Chapter 9 explains in detail how to make using the Timeline completely pain-
less. For now, you should just understand the essentials. See Figure 1-7 for
the basic Timeline.
Figure 1-7: The Timeline is your key to managing animation.
On the left side of the Timeline is the layer list. When you open a new movie,
you see only one layer, unimaginatively named Layer 1. A layer is like a sheet
of transparent acetate on which you draw objects. Layers help you keep
objects from running into each other, causing unfortunate, messy results.
You organize your entire movie by using layers. For example, if you want to
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