Flash CS5: The Missing Manual

Editing a Tween Span

The tween span in the timeline deserves a closer look (Figure 8-9), since it gives you a good overview of what's going on in a tween. When you create a motion tween, Flash colors it blue to set it off from the other layers, so you can easily find your way around. Property keyframes are diamond-shaped in the timeline to distinguish them from the circle-shaped standard keyframes. Clicking anywhere on the tween selects the entire tween and moves the playhead to that frame in the tween. What if you need to select a single frame in a tween? Perhaps you want to copy a tweened symbol's properties at that point in the timeline. In that case, Ctrl-click (⌘-click) the timeline to select a single frame. Then, right-click the frame and choose Copy Properties from the shortcut menu.

Figure 8-9. The tween layer is a light blue to distinguish it from the other layers. The small diamond-shaped markers are property keyframes.

When you apply a motion tween to an object, Flash automatically sets aside a certain number of frames for the tween, marking them with the blue highlight. If there's only one keyframe in the layer, Flash uses all the layer's frames for the tween. Otherwise, if there are several keyframes on a layer, Flash uses all the frames between two keyframes. So, being the clever designer you are, you take this into account when you create your motion tweens; you lengthen ...