Tools and Options

The Flash drawing toolbar is what you use to create graphic elements within Flash (bitmaps and graphics from other programs are imported). It consists of two areas: the toolbar buttons and their options (Figure 3.1). When you click a tool, it becomes active, displaying a set of options you can use to adjust its settings: Select the Eraser tool, for example, and only those options that apply to it will appear in the Options section of the toolbar. This type of context-sensitive interface makes numerous settings readily accessible without having to access the menu bar—a clutter-free and time-saving feature that surprisingly few other programs incorporate.

Figure 3.1. Many tools have options that appear at the bottom of the toolbar when you click a tool's button.