Datasheet

Part I: A Blast of Flash

If your screen opens with several rectangular panels strewn about or docked

on various sides, don’t worry about them now. We explain how to open and

use these panels throughout this book, but you don’t need them for this

chapter. If they drive you crazy, right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac)

each panel’s title bar and choose Close or Close Group in the menu that

appears.

Tooling around the toolbars

Flash contains two toolbars in the Mac version: the Edit bar and the

Controller. In Windows, Flash also offers the Main toolbar. To display or hide

these toolbars, choose Window➪Toolbars and click the toolbar that you

want to display or hide. Here is a description of the toolbars:

✓ Main toolbar (Windows only): Contains commonly used commands,

such as Open, Save, and Print. By default, Flash does not display the

Main toolbar.

✓ Controller: Lets you control the playback of movies. For more informa-

tion, see Chapter 9.

✓ Edit bar: Helps you work with the symbols, scenes, and the user

interface (UI). The bar, shown in Figure 1-3, appears below the menu.

It includes a button to access symbols (which we cover in Part III), a

button for editing scenes, and a zoom control. We discuss the Timeline

later in the chapter, in the “Following a timeline” section. For detailed

information about the Timeline and scenes, see Chapter 9.

Using panels

Panels give you access to the many Flash tools and settings. You access the

panels from the Window menu. We discuss the specific panels throughout

this book. In this section, we explain how to keep control over your panels.

Most panels are dockable, which means they can sit at the side or bottom of

your Flash window without covering up your work and they fit together in a

group with other panels. You can also stack undocked panels on top of each

other. You control panels by doing the following:

✓ Dock a panel. Drag it by its title bar to the side or bottom of your

screen. When you see a blue bar highlight, release the mouse button.

05_613559-ch01.indd 1805_613559-ch01.indd 18 3/22/10 7:42 PM3/22/10 7:42 PM