Macromedia Studio 8 [Electronic resources] : Training from the Source نسخه متنی

Converting Existing Graphics into Symbols

As mentioned earlier, the Flash Library holds imported assets, such as the bitmaps you just imported, and symbols. Symbols are just reusable graphics with special built-in capabilities. In this task, you'll convert a couple of graphics on the stage to a symbol, to take advantage of the symbol's special capabilities when you begin scripting the movie in the next lesson.

Although the shapes might look like a button, right now, as far as Flash is concerned, they're just a pair of vector shapes.

Flash automatically groups all vector graphics imported from Freehand. In the next lesson, you'll need to edit the triangles, and it will be easier if they are not grouped. Notice that their appearance changes after you choose this option; rather than being surrounded by a blue bounding box, they have a crosshatch pattern on them, indicating that they're selected.

Each symbol must have a unique name, which is how the symbol is tracked in the Library. In addition, all symbols must be one of three types, called Behaviors: movie clip, button, or graphic.

If you look in the Library now, you'll see a button called "next."

Back on the stage, the two triangles are again surrounded by a blue bounding box, this time indicating that the two triangles are now actually an instance of a symbol, as opposed to simple vector art on the stage.

The two blue bounding boxes surrounding each of the two triangles indicate that once again, these are a pair of vector graphics, and not a button at all. You already have a button for these in the Library; what's needed here is a new instance of that button.

[View full size image]

Don't delete the word "Restart"!

You don't need these triangles any more, because you're about to replace them with a button symbol instance.

Creating an instance is a matter of dragging and dropping from the Library. When you complete this step, the movie has two instances of the next button, one in the second screen and one in the third. Although each button has a different label (one says "Next" and the other says "Restart"), both are linked to the parent symbol. Thus, if you update the parent symboland you will in the next lessonyou'll update both instances at the same time.

You've reached the end of the lesson. You might be surprised that you've spent an hour and a half or so in Flash and still haven't created any animation or interactivity. The ability to create animation or interactivity is dependent on placing the elements in an appropriate architecture: the timeline, layers, keyframes, the Library, and so on. You've done all that in this lesson, and you're finally ready to turn to the fun parts of Flash: animation and interactivity.