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Introduction
In the last part of the tutorial I introduced you to actions in Flash using
buttons to control your animation. In this part I will show you more of the
things you can do with Flash 5's actions.
Inserting Actions
In the last part I showed you how to use an action with a button so that it was
triggered when the button was clicked. Actions can also be added to frames and
to other mouse events on the button. Firstly I will cover the buttons. If you
haven't done so already make a simple button for your animation and right click
on it and choose Actions. The actions window (which you first used last week)
will appear. It has two windows. The one on the right contains the hundreds of
actions you can add. The one on the left contains the code (like programming
code). Choose an event (like Go To) and double click it to add it to the code.
This is as far as you did in the last part.
What you didn't learn last week was that you can change what triggers the
action. There are several options for this. To access them click on the part of
the code which says:
on (release) {
A new section will now appear at the bottom of the box with the options for this
part of the code (in Flash you write code by selecting options). Her you can
choose what triggers the action. As you can see it is currently set as Release
so when the mouse button is released the action will happen. This is fine for
clicks but you may want to use some of the other triggers. To change the trigger
just deselect the old one and select a new one. You can select more than one but
just now I don't recommend it.
You can also trigger actions when a frame loads. Right click in any keyframe and
choose Actions. This is exactly the same as the button Actions box except when
you add an action there will be no:
on() {
code as the actions are executed when the frame is played.
Some Actions
I will now cover some of the actions you can add. Most of these will be
available for both buttons and frames but some may not.
Go To
Go To, like its name suggests, makes the playback move to a different part of
the movie. There are several options for this. You can choose the Scene in your
movie to point to (if you are using multiple scenes), choose the type of Go To
and the Frame. The type has several options but the 3 you will probably use most
are Frame Number, Next Frame and Previous Frame. If you choose Frame Number,
type in the box below which frame you want the movie to go to. Next and Previous
frame are self explanitary.
The other option is the Go To and Play checkbox. If this is checked the movie
will go to the specified frame (or scene) and will continue playing from that
point. If you deselect it the movie will go to that frame but will only show
that frame, and will not continue playing until another action tells it to.
Play and Stop
The Play and Stop actions have no parameters. One plays the movie from the
current point and the other stops it (although it remains at its current
position).
Toggle High Quality and Stop All
Sounds
Toggle High Quality will switch the movie between high and low quality. Stop All
Sounds will stop all the sounds currently playing in the movie. Neither of these
have any parameters which can be set.
Get URL
This can be used for both frames and buttons. Basically, when clicked, it will
point the browser to the specified URL. The URL is specified in the parameters
for the action. You can also choose the window for the new page you are opening.
This is the same as target in HTML. _blank will open in a new window and you can
specify the name of a frame in here (if you are using them). The Variables
option allows you to send the variables set in a form in your movie just like an
HTML form (this is good for Submit buttons). You can choose between the standard
POST and GET options.
If Frame Is Loaded
The If Frame Is Loaded is quite a complex but very useful command. It is used to
make the 'loading' parts at the beginning of some Flash movies. It is used like
an IF statement in a program. Double click the If Frame Is Loaded action to add
it to the code, then double click the Go To action. You now have a small IF
loop.
Firstly you should set the parameters for If Frame Is Loaded. Click on this part
of the code. You will see that this is very similar to the Go To parameters.
Here you select the frame you want to use. When this code is run it will check
whether the specified frame has loaded yet, if it has then it will execute the
code within the { and }.
Creating A 'Loading' Sequence
Many Flash animations on the internet, especially ones with a lot of sound and
images, will not just start playing smoothly while they are still loading. For
these, most people add a 'loading' part to their movie. This is a actually a few
frames which will repeat until the movie is loaded. They are actually quite easy
to make.
Firstly choose how many frames you will want for your 'loading' section.
Something like 10 frames is about right. Create the part of the animation you
want to loop in these frames. In the last frame of the 'loading' section right
click to access the Actions menu. Double click on If Frame Is Loaded and then
immediately afterwards double click on Go To. Then click on the final } in the
animation and double click the Go To action again. You should now have the
following code:
ifFrameLoaded (1) {
gotoAndPlay (1);
}
gotoAndPlay (1);
This is the code which will do the 'loading' part. Firstly click on
ifFrameLoaded(1) and choose the frame you want to wait until it is loaded from
the parameters. Click on the first gotoAndPlay(1) and choose frame 11 (if you
used 10 frames for your 'loading' sequence). Finally, for the last
gotoAndPlay(1) choose the first frame in your animation.
This is actually a very basic program, showing how easily complex programs can
be written using Flash's actions. What the code actually does is to check if the
specified frame is loaded. If it is it goes to the first frame of the acutal
animation. Otherwise, it returns to the beginning and plays the 'loading'
ssequence again.
Part 8
In this part I have shown you how you can use the Actions options in Flash to
make your movie more interactive. In the next part I will show you how to
include some sound into your movie.
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