Adobe Flash CS4 Professional for Windows and Macintosh: Visual QuickStart Guide

Using Panels

The Flash Authoring Tool

13

Using Panels

Flash organizes drawing and authoring tools

as panels. Some panels contain tools for cre-

ating or modifying graphic elements. Others

help you organize and navigate your Flash

document. You can dock panels within the

application frame or have them  oat inde-

pendently. You’ll learn to work with speci c

panels in later chapters of this book. For now,

you’ll learn general features of panels and

how to manage them in the workspace.

Accessing Panels

An open panel appears as a tab inside a

panel frame; the frame may appear inside a

dock in Flash’s application frame or inside

a  oating window. You can group multiple

panels within one panel frame; they appear

as horizontal tabs. Clicking a tab in a group

activates that panel, making it visible in the

frame. You can also stack frames vertically

within a dock or  oating window. To manipu-

late panels, use the interface elements shown

in Figure 1.16.

Figure 1.16 Common panel-interface elements help you work effi ciently with panels. Whether panels are in fl oating

windows or docked, you can group them, stack them, and collapse them to icons to save space.

Tab bar

Grouped panel tabs Panel menu

(options for the

active panel)

Panel menu

(options for the

active panel)

Collapse to

Icons button

Tab barTitle bar

Close-panel-window button

Single-panel tab

Docked panels

Floating panel window (Mac)

Title bar

Close-panel-window

button

Panel menu

(options for the

active panel)

Collapse to

Icons button

Floating panel window (Windows)

Using Panels

Chapter 1

14

Figure 1.17

The Window menu

contains a list of the

panels in Flash.

Figure 1.18 You can close panels individually or as

groups (whether docked or fl oating). In the Tab bar

of the frame containing the panel (or panels) you

want to close, click the panel menu and choose Close

or Close Group.

Figure 1.19 Clicking the close

button on a fl oating panel window

closes the window and all its

panels, including stacked panels.

To open (or close) panels:

◆ From the Window menu, select the

desired panel—for example, Color

(Figure 1.17).

One of the following actions takes place:

▲

If the selected panel is closed, a frame

containing that panel opens.  e

frame may appear in a dock or in a

 oating window, depending on the

selected workspace and any modi ca-

tions you’ve made to it.

▲

If the selected panel is minimized (to

the Tab bar) or collapsed (to an icon),

it expands.

▲

If the selected panel is obscured

behind other tabs in the same frame

or other  oating panel windows, the

selected panel moves to the front.

▲

If the selected panel is the only tab—or

the front tab—in a frame in a  oating

window that is already open, expanded,

and in front, the entire window closes.

▲

If the selected panel is the only tab—

or the front tab—in a docked frame

that is already open and expanded, the

frame containing that panel (includ-

ing all its tabs) closes. Other frames

stacked within the dock remain open.

✔ Tips

■ To remove one panel from a panel frame,

from the panel menu (located at the right

side of the Tab bar), choose Close; the active

panel closes. To remove all the panels

from that frame, choose Close Group; the

panel frame (and all the panel tabs in it)

closes; any panel frames stacked above or

below that frame stay open (Figure 1.18).

■ To close all the panels in a  oating

window quickly, click the window’s close

button.  e window closes, along with all

the panel frames within it (Figure 1.19).

Close window