Flash Basics

Properties Inspector

Is located at the bottom part of the screen. If it is minimized, open it by clicking the arrow at it’s left corner.

Properties Inspector displays all properties (attributes) of the object you are currently working on. If you have nothing on the stage to select or if you click the mouse beyond the stage – you will see properties of all the Flash movie file at the Properties Inspector. In the picture you see this case. For the movie you may change Stage size and background color (do it – make your stage black instead of white and size as 200X200 px). Publish version is currently Flash 6 Player, keep it like that, we will discuss publish settings later.

One more important property – Frame Rate – it is the speed the movie frames changes. Currently it is 12 frames per second and it is optimal to create a visual effect of the movement (like in cartoons). In case you need to change your frames in faster of slower rate you may change it, but in most situation you wouldn’t.

On your opened Flash default file click the timeline at the first frame. You will see that Properties Inspector has change it’s appearance. New properties are displayed for you.

Later when working with various drawing tools and objects you will see that every time you do something different, Properties Inspector will show you relevant set of properties for your work. It is a new feature of Flash MX. Working with previous version – Flash 5 – designer needed manually open separate property panel for each kind of object.

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