Flash CS3: The Missing Manual

Templates

While symbols let you reuse images and series of frames, templates let you reuse entire Flash documents.

Templates are useful when you find yourself cranking out animations that look and behave similarly. For example, say you create marketing animations for display on your corporate Web site. You may find that your animations share a lot of the same elements: your company's logo somewhere on the background, a copy-right notice, the same sound clips of your CEO speaking, the same color palette, the same size Stage, and the same intro and credit scenes.

Using a template, you can create all these basic elements just once. Then, the next time you're tapped to do a marketing spot, you can load the template and just add the new content you need. You've not only saved yourself a lot of time, but you've also ensured consistency among your animations (highly important in certain corporate circles).

In this section, you see how to create and use your own templates. You also see how to take advantage of Flash's prebuilt templates.

Using a Prebuilt Template

Flash comes with a bunch of templates all ready for you to customize. While they're obviously not specific to your particular company or project, they can save you time on a lot of basic animations, including banner ads, slideshows, and presentations. Here's a quick rundown of the templates you find in Flash:

• Advertising. Pop-up, skyscraper (skinny vertical), banner (skinny horizontal), and full-page ads.

• BREW Handsets. For Flash animations ...