Description

In this lesson, you will learn how to use and script movie clips. Movie clips are symbols that have their own timeline that is independent of the main timeline. Movie clips can be static or animated. The power of movie clips is their ability to be scripted and loaded on demand by either an event in the timeline or a user event handler.

Objectives

By the end of this Lesson, you will successfully:

• name instances on the stage.
• create several nested symbol instances.
• target nested instances from a timeline different than the one in which they reside.
• use the Flash Movie Explorer to analyze .fla files.
• demonstrate the difference between absolute and relative paths.

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Make the Connection

It's hard to think about the benefits of scripting movie clip symbols when you are not yet sure what they do. Think about the labels and navigation and the interactive buttons and actions that you created. How could you get even more interactivity with putting these actions in movie clips?  Think about answering this question as you read through and create the assignment for this week. The assignment for this lesson, targeting nested instances, is one of the foundations of Flash. Mastering this technique is the key to creating well designed and cleanly structured movies.

Resources - Extend your Learning

No additional resources are recommended for this lesson. Use the time to work on your final project. Collect assets for your library to help you in producing your project.

Please continue to the next section of this lesson.

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8.1 Movie Clips » 8.2 Scripting Instances » 8.3 The Flash Movie Explorer » 8.4 Object Actions