Flash CS5: The Missing Manual

Reversing a Series of Frames

Reversing a series of frames is a useful effect. A basketball bouncing up and down, a flag waving side to side, a boomerang advancing and receding: These things are all examples of reversing a single series of frames.

Instead of creating the two complete series of frames by hand—one showing a ball falling, for example, and another showing the same ball bouncing back up—you can copy the frame series, paste it, and use Modify→Timeline→Reverse Frames to reverse the pasted frames.

Design Time: Power to the People

Early on, one of the beefs people had with Flash advertising and splash screens (intro pages) was the inability to control the animations. It wasn't easy to stop, start, bypass, or control the sound on some of those pages. It gave Flash a bad name.

Things have changed. You can use Flash to create entire web-based environments with ingenious and creative navigation systems. If you don't, even though your audience can right-click (or Control-click) your animation to view a context menu that lets them interact with your animation, context menus aren't particularly useful when it comes to providing consistent playback control. For one thing, few audience members know about them. Also, Flash gurus who also happen to be expert ActionScript coders can modify, rearrange, add to, and delete menu options.

Don't be one of them. Consider the Flash experience from your audience's point of view. You won't go wrong by giving power to the people. Giving your audience ...