Adobe Flash Professional CS6 Adobe Flash Professional CS6 Classroom In A Book | Page 93

It’s also helpful to think of symbols as containers. Symbols are simply containers for
your content. A symbol can contain a JPEG image, an imported Illustrator drawing,
or a drawing that you created in Flash. At any time, you can go inside your symbol
and edit it, which means editing or replacing its contents.
Each of the three kinds of symbols in Flash is used for a specific purpose. You can
tell whether a symbol is a graphic (
), button (
), or movie clip (
) by look-
ing at the icon next to it in the Library panel.
movie clip symbols
Movie clip symbols are one of the most common, powerful, and flexible of symbols.
When you create animation, you will typically use movie clip symbols. You can
apply filters, color settings, and blending modes to a movie clip instance to enhance
its appearance with special effects.
Also notable is the fact that each movie clip symbol contains its own independent
Timeline. You can have an animation inside a movie clip symbol just as easily as
you can have an animation on the main Timeline. This makes very complex anima-
tions possible; for example, a butterfly flying across the Stage can move from left to
right as well as have its wings flapping independently of its movement.
Most important, you can control movie clips with ActionScript to make them
respond to the user. For instance, a movie clip can have drag-and-drop behavior.
button symbols
Button symbols are used for interactivity. They contain four unique keyframes that
describe how they appear when the mouse is interacting with them. However, but-
tons need ActionScript functionality to make them do something.
You can also apply filters, blending modes, and color settings to buttons. You’ll
learn more about buttons in Lesson 6 when you create a nonlinear navigation
scheme to allow the user to choose what to see.
graphic symbols
Graphic symbols are the most basic kind of symbol. Although you can use them for
animation, you’ll rely more heavily on movie clip symbols.
Graphic symbols are the least flexible symbols, because they don’t support
ActionScript and you can’t apply filters or blending modes to a graphic symbol.
However, in some cases when you want an animation inside a graphic symbol to be
synchronized to the main Timeline, graphic symbols are useful.
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Lesson 3
Creating and editing symbols