Zoom In and Out
Zooming gives you the ability to enlarge or reduce the view of the Flash work area to make it easier to work in. The Zoom functions can be found in the View menu.
■ Selecting View | Zoom In magnifies elements on the stage, and selecting View | Zoom Out reduces elements. The Zoom function enlarges and reduces in increments of 100 percent.
■ Selecting View | Magnification presents a pop-up menu with various magnification settings ranging from 25 percent to 800 percent, as shown here.

■ View | Magnification | Show Frame and View | Magnification | Show All provide you with two quick ways to view the entire frame as opposed to viewing an individual element on the stage.

Use the Zoom Control
You can also zoom in and out of the stage using the Zoom control located in the upper-right corner of the stage on the Edit bar, right above the timeline. This data also indicates the current zoom setting, as shown here:

With the Zoom control, you can zoom in and out in on the stage in one of two ways:
■ Select a preset zoom from the pop-up menu.
■ Highlight the zoom number and type in a custom view.

The stage can be enlarged all the way up to 2000 percent and reduced all the way down to 8 percent. This zoom range is a little extreme, but if you wanted to, you could hone in on a minute detail using this tool.

Use the Zoom Tool Although we’re going to cover each element in the Toolbar in detail later on, it’s important to mention the Zoom tool in the context of viewing a document in Flash. The Zoom tool, shown here, is in the View section of the Toolbar, to the right of the Hand tool.

The Zoom tool is a familiar sight to users of graphics applications, and it essentially works in Flash in the same way it does in most other programs.

To use the Zoom tool to enlarge an object, click the tool. When you do this, the cursor becomes a magnifying glass, and additional options related to the Zoom tool appear at the bottom of the Toolbar in the Options section, as shown next. The Options section of the Toolbar is contextual and changes depending on which tool you have selected.

On the left is the Enlarge Zoom icon with the plus sign (+), and on the right is the Reduce Zoom icon with a minus sign (–). These tools allow you to hone in on a specific object or area, as opposed to selecting Zoom from the menu. To zoom in or out on an object or a portion of the stage, either click in the area you want to zoom in or out on or draw an invisible marquee around the area with the Zoom tool (see Figure below). You can use the marquee selection method with the Zoom tool if you want to quickly isolate a particular element on the stage. That way you don’t have to scroll the page to target a particular area each time you try to enlarge the page.

If you hold down ALT in Windows or OPT on the Mac while using the Enlarge Zoom tool, the tool turns into Reduce Zoom, and vice versa.

Scroll on the Stage
When the View tools are used to enlarge an area of the stage, you will often need to scroll to a different area of the stage to target a specific object or area. A quick way to navigate around a stage is to use the Hand tool. The Hand tool, shown here, is located in the View section of the Toolbar, right next to the Zoom icon.

When you click this tool in the Toolbar, your cursor becomes a hand icon. To use this hand to scroll around on the stage, click an area and drag. The Hand tool allows you to scroll very precisely and is perfect for honing in on a particular object. The keyboard shortcut to access the Hand tool quickly is H.

Another quick way of scrolling is to hold down the SPACEBAR, click, and drag around the stage. While the SPACEBAR is down, the Hand icon will replace the cursor. When you release the SPACEBAR, the cursor returns to its previous state.

Another quick way of scrolling is to hold down the SPACEBAR, click, and drag around the stage. While the SPACEBAR is down, the Hand icon will replace the cursor. When you release the SPACEBAR, the cursor returns to its previous state.

Use the Grid
If you prefer to work on a stage with an organized structure, you can turn on the grid in the Flash workspace and align elements using this grid. Similar to most other elements in Flash, the grid has properties. You can make it visible or invisible, change spacing and color, and choose whether objects snap to grid points, among other things. If you choose View | Grid | Show Grid, Flash will display a grid, as shown in next figure.

Use Grid Snapping
You can use the Flash grid in two ways: as a visual reference for manually aligning objects to grid intersections, and/or as a virtual reference in which Flash snaps objects to intersecting grid points. If you choose View | Snapping | Snap to Grid, Flash will snap an object to grid points as you move it across the stage.

When you employ Flash to align objects to grid points, the part of the object that aligns to the grid is the handle you clicked on the object to select it. Every object you create has a bounding box with a handle (an unfilled dot) in its center and a handle for each extremity of the bounding box. As you drag an object, the handle by which you are dragging the object becomes larger and darker when it nears a grid intersection point, as shown here:

Edit the Grid
The default grid will display a light-gray line every 18 pixels along the document’s width and length. You can modify the grid spacing and color to suit the document you are editing. Choose View | Grid | Edit Grid, and Flash will display the Grid dialog box shown here.

There are several grid properties you can change in the Grid dialog box, such as the color of the grid and the spacing of the grid lines. And grid-snapping accuracy can also be customized to suit your particular project.