Adobe Creative Cloud Design Tools All-in-One For Dummies

Chapter 7: Controlling Your Movie with ActionScript

In This Chapter

• Discovering ActionScript
• Adding actions to the Timeline
• Creating button symbols
• Applying code snippets
• Enabling buttons with ActionScript

Whether you're creating a website, mobile application, or game, you can't create a truly interactive experience without giving your users total control of the action. If you want to take your movies to the next level, then, ActionScript can help. This powerful, built-in scripting language can help you do everything from controlling basic movie playback to creating complex games and even loading dynamic content and data.

This chapter introduces you to ActionScript and shows you how to use it to create interactive elements, such as clickable buttons, in your movies.

Getting to Know ActionScript

ActionScript is a powerful scripting language that you can use to control playback, navigation, and imported media, such as images, video, and audio. The ActionScript language comprises a vast series of commands that are placed on the Timeline, within movie clips, or in external files using the Actions panel and the Code Snippets panel. Think of ActionScript as a set of instructions you can give your movie to tell it how to behave and add capabilities.

In its most basic form, ActionScript is used for Timeline control so that you can tell animations when and where to stop, loop, play, or jump to other points along a timeline. You can also make highly interactive movies by adding controls ...