Lesson 5: Pt. 3
| Pt. 1 | Pt. 2 | Pt. 3 |
Buttons and Actions Exercise
Flash: Interactive Web Animation
by Ken Kimura


Open up your movie that contains your motion guide animation.
  1. First create a new symbol (F8 or ”Insert” menu/”New Symbol...”). name it “Btn_Play” and set it’s behavior to be a button.



  2. In the first keyframe draw a blue box.
  3. Add a keyframe to the rest of the button states.
  4. Change the color of the box that you’ve drawn in the Over and Down states.
  5. Create a new layer with the text “PLAY” that stays the same throughout all button states.
  6. Open your library palette (f11). Select the Btn_Play symbol. From the library palette dropdown menu (found at the top right corner of the palette) select “Duplicate.” This will make a copy of the button. name this copy “Btn_Stop.”
  7. Edit the stop button so that it’s text reads “STOP.”
  8. Go back to your main timeline (Scene 1)
  9. Create a new layer and call it “buttons.”
  10. Place both the Btn_Play symbol and the Btn_ Stop symbols on this layer.
  11. Make the buttons layer have frames throughout your timeline.
  12. Test your movie to make sure your buttons change when you rollover and click on them.
  13. Create a new layer and call it “actions.”
  14. We are going to add a Frame Action. On the first keyframe of the actions layer, write an action to stop the movie from playing. To do this, Select the keyframe, then open the Actions Panel (F9.) Open the actions toolbox and double click on “stop.” This adds the stop command to the keyframe.
  15. We’re now going to add actions to objects - specifically the instances of the button symbols. Select the play button. In the actions panel double click on play.
  16. Select the stop button. In the actions panel double click on Stop.
  17. Test your movie.
Lesson 5: Pt. 3
| Pt. 1 | Pt. 2 | Pt. 3 |