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

Preparing the Quicktip Movie Clip and Dynamic Text Field

In this task, you'll prepare the movie clip and dynamic text fields. In the next task, when each element is in place, you'll begin scripting to make them functional.

This step converts the graphic symbol to a movie clip symbol. You'll still need to do some work with the graphic symbol, but this change alone opens up a whole new realm of possibility.

The symbol contains only a beige rounded rectangle, which defines the shape of the quicktip.

The positioning doesn't matter because this movie clip will be invisible when it's loaded; when it is visible, the same script that makes it visible will also position it correctly.

This small beige rounded rectangle forms the outline of the quicktip pop-up window. Its substance will be provided by text loaded into a dynamic text field. But at the moment, the movie clip has no dynamic text field.

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Tip

Insert dummy text, if necessary, to help you position the text correctly.

Holding down the Shift key ensures that the dynamic text field is exactly tall enough to fit whole lines of text at the specified size.

The first group of text settingsfont, size, and so onis familiar to you, because they are universal to just about any application that handles text. But the most important setting here is unique to Flash: the Dynamic Text setting. By choosing Dynamic Text as the Text Type, you make the text field available to ActionScript.

my <b>bold</b> text. If Render Text a232 is toggled off, the dynamic text field displays "my <b>bold</b> text." If Render Text a232 is toggled on, the Dynamic Text field displays "my

bold text." In other words, Render Text a232 enables you to control character-level formatting in Dynamic Text fields.

When you leave, the new symbol is saved in the Library, and all placed instances (in this case, just one) are also updated.

The quickTip_txt dynamic text field is located inside this movie clip instance. When you reference variables inside of movie clips from ActionScript that is outside the movie clip (such as a script on the main timeline), you need to specify which movie clip instance's variable you are setting. To do so, you reference it with its instance name.

In this step, you are creating the instance name that will enable you to change the variable inside the quickTip instance from buttons on the main timeline. You'll actually write such a script in the next task.