Flash Workspace

Change the display of the tools panel to make it one tool wide and very long by clicking the arrows at the top of the tool panel

some of the tools have pop-outs offering similar tools, such as the rectangular shape drawing tool

Tool options for individual tools appear at the bottom of the tool panel when the tool is selected

Change the tools via the menu: Edit>Customize Tool Panel

Drawing Tool Bar - left to right, top to bottom

Row 1:

Selection Tool, grab, select, move & reshape graphics - options, 

• snap-to objects - snaps selected object into position on stage
• smooth - smooth lines or simple shapes on stage
• Straighten - lines or simple shapes on stage

Sub-selection tool lets you select and work with anchor points that exist in shape's path

Row 2:

Free transform tool to change the shape, size of elements

• Rotate - elements on stage
• Scale - resize elements on stage

Lasso tool - selects simple shapes on stage

Row 3:

Pen tool -- Draw a variety of open or closed shapes with straight or curved line segments, employing current settings in Stroke panel -- if you draw a closed shape it will automatically be filled 

Text tool creates editable text

Row 4:

Line Tool

Shape drawing tools: Rectangle tool, Oval Tool, Rectangle Primitive Tool, Oval Primitive Tool, PolyStart Tool

Row 5:

Pencil Tool draws freehand straight or curved lines -- includes pencil mode options for modifying drawn lines

• straighten
• can smooth roughly drawn images - select type of smoothing 
• ink mode if you don't want smoothing of the image 

brush, fills or brushes areas with solid colors, bitmaps or gradient fill -- settings on Fill panel

• Brush mode determines brush strokes (paint normal, paint fills, paint behind, paint selection, paint inside)
• Use Pressure for graphics tablets
• Brush size
• Brush shape
• Lock fill - controls how gradients fill

Row 6:

Ink bottle tool - lets you create & modify color, size & style of line surrounding a shape, as defined in Stroke panel

Paint bucket fills selected shape

Row 7:

Eyedropper Tool - picks up colors for foreground/background

Eraser Tool erases

• eraser mode (bottom of toolbar) erases in same way brushes apply paint
• Faucet mode erases everything withing same outline 

Row 8

Hand tool

Zoom tool

Row 9:

Stroke color defines the color of the outline of a shape

Fill color defines the color within a drawn shape. It can be a solid color or a gradient color.

Clicking on either stroke color of fill color opens the color picker -- gradient swatches are only available for fill color

Stroke color and Fill Color controls in the toolbox

Row 10:

Switch background and foreground colors

Row 11

tool options for selected tool

Property inspector for Text

Text types available in Flash

• Static text fields display text that doesn't change characters dynamically.
• Dynamic text fields display dynamically updating text, such as sports scores, stock quotes, or weather reports.
• Input text fields enable users to enter text in forms or surveys.

Info Panel

Align Panel

Transform Panel

Color Mixer Panel

• To create and edit solid colors and gradient fills.
• Color modifications you make in the Color Mixer are applied to the object iselected on the Stage,
• Can create any color using the Color Mixer in RGB, HSB
• Expand the panel to use hex codes.
• specify an alpha value to define the degree of transparency for a color
• select a color from the existing color palette.