Have you been following this Flash tutorial series? Can't find them? There are links to the earlier articles in the series in the Related Resources section of this article. What do you think of this series? What topics would you like to see addressed? Let us know in the Web design discussion group.
Not all animations should run automatically and continuously. ActionScript gives you the ability to provide users with control over animations and other Flash actions. In this fifth Flash MX tutorial you'll learn how to create complex buttons that use ActionScript commands to cause movie clip objects to disappear and reappear.
by John Lee
May 16, 2003
he last lesson in this series introduced you to Button symbols and showed how to use them to create interactivity via ActionScript, Macromedia's programming language for Flash MX. In this tutorial, you'll delve deeper into ActionScript to create more complex animated buttons using more sophisticated ActionScript commands.
If you don't have Flash MX, you can download a free 30-day trial version that you can use to explore Flash's capabilities.
Setting Up the Flash MX Work Area
As in the previous tutorials, you'll begin by setting the Panel layout to Designer mode. Click the Window menu and then click on the Panel Sets item. From the options available in PanelSets, select Designer [1024 X 768]. You should be familiar with the Color Mixer, Tools, Timeline and Properties panels by now. Now go back to the Window menu and open the Library panel so that you can create and store Symbols for this project. Then go back to the Window menu again and open the Actions panel. As you know from the last lesson, the Actions panel is the method by which you issue script commands for movie objects and timeline frames.
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