Save a Flash Document
When you save a Flash document in its native FLA format, you can open the file at a later date to edit it, or you can share the file with another Flash author working on the project. You can also share the document across platforms if you include the Flash extension (.fla) as part of your naming convention. To save an existing Flash document, choose File | Save. Select File | Save As to save a file with another name or to copy an existing file. Flash automatically assigns a name of Untitled in the Save As input field. In the Save As dialog box, shown next, navigate to the folder where you want to save the file, name it, and then click OK. Flash will save the file and all the assets used to create it to your hard drive for future use. Assets are different kinds of elements you use to build your Flash movie. They may consist of symbols, imported bitmaps, graphics, sounds, movie clips, buttons, and video.

If your project is growing in size, you’ll want to use the Save As command frequently as opposed to a plain old Save. This will help keep the file size smaller.

Choose Movie Properties
Movies have characteristics just as the objects you create in Flash do. A movie has a size, a background color, and a frame rate. If you are not working with a template, it’s important to set up the movie properly before you begin. Changing the movie properties in mid-creation can cause you to have to redo much of your creation. Here the various property selections are examined.

Modify the Movie Size
To modify the default size of your movie, enter the desired width and height values in the Document Properties dialog box (accessed from the Properties Inspector), as shown in the following illustration.

In addition, you can set a background color, frame rate for animation, and ruler unit of measurement. The Document Properties dialog box is accessed in one of five ways:
■ Select Modify | Document from the menu.
■ Press ctrl-j in Windows/cmd-j on the Mac.
■ In the Properties Inspector at the bottom of the workspace,               
   click the Size input box, as shown at right.
■ Right-click in Windows/ctrl-click on the Mac on either a blank part of the stage or the work area. Then from the pop-up menu, select Document Properties.
■ Double-click the FPS setting at the bottom of the timeline as shown here.

To apply a new setting to a movie, input the new information and click OK. Flash will adjust the document accordingly.
You can also change the default size (550?400 pixels) of a new document. Change the default if you are working on a project that is based on a custom size. This will make your workflow a little more smoothly.

Grasp the Stage Concept
You had a glimpse of the stage in Chapter 1, so you have some familiarity with it. The stage is used to create, assemble, and edit graphics that eventually transform into your Flash movie. You can see the stage within the Flash workspace in Figure below.

The stage defines the size of each frame in your finished Flash movie. In this sense, a frame on the stage would be the equivalent of a page if you were working in a typical graphics program. Just as in a drawing program, if you create or drag objects off the page (stage) onto the gray area, the objects won’t appear in your movie when it’s viewed. You can also deliberately position elements off the stage if you want an animated object to travel to and from the stage.

The other important element regarding the stage is that it also displays the current frame, or the frame that’s playing at that moment. The current frame can have the same contents as the frame before it or it can change to display different objects. You, the individual who controls the contents of your movie, make all the decisions on how the movie plays out. Frames are made and controlled in the timeline, which we discuss later on in this chapter in the section “Work with the Timeline.”

View Elements on the Stage
While working on a Flash document, you will often need to enlarge or reduce the view of an object on the stage. Flash offers many convenient features to change the view of the stage, as well as to navigate quickly to a specific area on the stage. Let’s take a look at these tools.

emember, you can also access a tool by using a shortcut key. Shortcut keys are listed in the Toolbar’s tooltips. If you find tooltips annoying instead of helpful, turn them off in the General tab under Edit | Preferences.