Flash on a Mac

Flash 8

You might find it handy to add the Flash 8 icon to your Dock for easy launching. To do this, click the Finder icon on the extreme left of the Dock to bring
up a new Finder window. Navigate in the Finder window to the Applications
folder, and in the Applications folder, double-click the Macromedia Flash 8
folder to open it. Click and drag the Flash 8 application icon to the Dock. A
copy of the Flash 8 application icon appears on the Dock.
Creating a new movie
Files that you create by using Flash are commonly called movies. When you
start Flash, the startup screen appears (by default). In the Create New section, click Flash Document. If you have already opened a movie and have the
menus available, choose File➪New. In the New Document dialog box, select
Flash Document on the General tab and then click OK. You usually start by
creating or importing some graphics.

Opening an existing movie

If you want to work on a movie you’ve already created, when you first open
Flash, choose the movie from the Open a Recent Item section or choose Open
to find the file. If you’ve already opened a movie and have the menus available, press Ctrl+O (Windows) or Ô+O (Mac) or choose File➪Open; then
double-click the movie to open it. The first frame appears on your screen,
and you can edit the movie any way that you want.
When you open more than one movie, you see a tab at the top for each movie.
You can click the tabs to move from movie to movie. The tabs appear in the
order you created or opened the movies.

Using panels

Panels give you access to the many Flash 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 that they can sit at the side or
bottom of your Flash window without covering up your work. You can also
stack them on top of each other. You control panels by doing the following:
 To dock a panel: Drag it to the side or bottom of your screen.
 To undock a panel: Drag it from its grabber, which is at the left edge of
its title bar.
 To open or close a panel: Choose it from the Window menu.
 To close an undocked panel: Click its Close button.
 To close a docked panel: Right-click (Windows)/Control+click (Mac) its
title bar and choose Close Panel.
You can stack panels just like you stack plastic containers in your refrigerator. Drag a panel (by its grabber) beneath another panel to stack it. You can
also collapse or expand panels: A collapsed panel displays only its title bar,
so it doesn’t take up much space. Use the arrow on the left side of the title
bar to collapse or expand a panel or click its title bar.


In Windows only, the Flash interface has new arrow buttons above panels that
are docked at the bottom of your screen and to the left of panels docked at the
right. Click an arrow to collapse the panels to just the tiny arrow button. Click
the arrow again to expand the panels to their previous display.
The Tools panel contains all the tools that you need to draw and edit objects.
At the bottom of the Tools panel are options that modify how the tools function. (See Chapters 3 and 4 for a complete description of the Tools panel.)
The Property inspector is another important panel. This panel displays information about selected objects, such as size, name, and location. You can
modify objects in the Property inspector as well. It is context-sensitive, which
means that its contents change according to what you’re doing. For example,
if you select a graphic object, the Property inspector provides settings relat￾ing to that object, and you can use the Property inspector to edit that object.
For the best in customization, you can save any layout of panels you like. Set
up the panels and choose Window➪Workspace Layout➪Save Current. In the
Save Workspace Layout dialog box that opens, give the layout a name and
click OK. To restore that layout at any time, choose Window➪Workspace
Layout and choose your very own layout.