Exploring the Tools

Using the Toolbox

The tools in the toolbox let you draw, paint, select, and modify artwork, and change the view of the Stage. The toolbox is divided into four sections:

The Tools section contains drawing, painting, and selection tools.
The View section contains tools for zooming and panning in the application window.
The Colors section contains modifiers for stroke and fill colors.
The Options section displays modifiers for the selected tool, which affect the tool's painting or editing operations.

Using The Toolbars
In Windows, you use the Toolbars submenu commands to hide or display toolbars containing shortcuts for menu commands. You can either dock the standard and drawing toolbars, or let them float above the window.

To show or hide toolbars:

1. Choose WINDOW / TOOLBARS and select from the following options:
   Main displays the standard toolbar, containing shortcuts for standard menu commands such as Open and Print.
   
   Status displays the Status bar, containing information about commands and buttons and the state of the Caps Lock and Num Lock keys.
   
   Controller displays the Controller, for controlling movie preview playback.

To move a floating toolbar:
Drag anywhere in the background or title bar.
To dock the toolbar, drag it to the edge of the Flash window. The toolbar automatically switches to a horizontal layout when docked to the top or bottom of the screen and to a vertical layout when docked to the left or right edge of the screen. To prevent docking, press the Control key while dragging the toolbar to a window edge.

Using panels
Floating panels help you view, organize, and change elements in a movie. The options available on panels control the characteristics of selected elements.

Panels in Flash let you work with objects, colors, text, instances, frames, scenes, and entire movies. For example, you use the Character panel for selecting type character attributes, and the Frame panel for entering frame labels and choosing tweening options. To view the complete list of panels available in Flash, choose Window > Panels.

You can show, hide, group, and resize panels as you work. You can also show and hide several panels, including the Info, Mixer, Instance, Frame, and Actions panels, using buttons in the Launcher bar at the bottom of the application window.

You can group panels together in custom arrangements, and you can save custom panel layouts. You can reset panel display to the default layout (displaying the Info, Mixer, Character, and Instance panels to the right of the application window) or to a custom layout that you have saved previously.

Most panels include a pop-up menu with additional options. The pop-up menu is indicated by a triangle in the panel's upper right corner. (If the triangle is dimmed, there is no pop-up menu for that panel.)