5 Flash Tips
Thursday, December 13th, 2007Rounded Corners
To set the corner radius visually, draw your rectangle and without releasing the mouse button — press the up and down arrows on your keyboard to alter the roundness or the corners. This also works in Fireworks!
Bitmap Fills
You can use a bitmap as a Fill, and paint with it just as you can paint with a gradient or solid color. Import a bitmap into the current scene and select it. Go to Modify > Break Apart, then choose the Eyedropper tool and click on the bitmap. The current fill is changed to the selected bitmap.
All Inclusive
ActionScript can be stored as external text files with an .as extension. To use them in a movie, you’ll need to place an ‘include’ in the file that points to the file. This enables you to reuse the complex routines in movies, or build up a library of common scripts.
Also to keep things organized, I would encourage you to place your .as files in folders that relate to what the file is all about. For example, I may have a folder called Actions and inside that folder several different .as files that relate to actions. Then just import them by calling import actions.flyout;
(flyout is the name of the .as file and actions is the name of the folder.)
Report It
Always generate a report detailing the impact that various objects in your movie have on the size and performance of the finished movie. To do this, you should check the box labeled Generate Size Report in the Flash Publish Settings dialog (File > Publish Settings > Flash tab).
Stage Manage
You can control the size of the current movie with the stage.height and stage.width commands.
Hope that helps someone and remember to only use Flash when it’s the right tool for the job.