In this tutorial, we will begin creating your Flash website. We will start a new Flash document, also called a Flash movie, and set the document properties for this movie such as the width, height and background color. If you haven't set up a folder on your desktop to store the files and images for your website, do so now.

Now you should have a folder on your computer desktop called MyWebsite and another folder called images inside the MyWebsite folder. Place all the images that you will use on your website into the images folder and you are ready to begin.


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Step 1. Open the Flash software. On the top Menubar, click File > New to open the New Document dialog box. In this dialog box you will see a General tab. Choose Flash Document from the list and click OK. You will see a white square in the open area of the workspace. This white square is called the Stage and you will build you website on this Stage.

Before we begin building the website, we need to adjust the size and background color of the Stage. We will make these adjustments by changing the document properties.

Step 2. Change the document's size. Click on the Selection Tool (black arrow) at the top of the Tools Toolbar. Next, click on the Stage to make the Stage the active (editable) object.

At the bottom of the workspace is the Property Inspector. (If the Property Inspector is not visible, go to the Menubar and click Window > Properties.) In the Property Inspector is the name of the active (editable) object. (In this case it should be Document). To the right, you will see a button labeled Size. The default width (550 pixels) and height (400 pixels) are displayed on the top of the button. We want to change the height to 450 pixels. Click on the button to open the Document Properties dialog box. In the first line in this dialog box, change the height to 450. (If you want to use a different height and width for your movie, enter those values instead.)

Step 3. Change the document's background color. By default the background color is white. If you would like to use a different color for your Flash movie, click on the tiny arrow on the small colored square next to Background color. This will open the color palette. You can click on a color swatch or enter the hexadecimal code of your color choice in the box. Then press the Enter key on your computer keyboard. Click OK to close the Document Properties dialog box.

Step 4. Save your work. Now we are ready to save the changes we have made to the Stage. Click File > Save As to open the Save As dialog box. Give your Flash movie a name and save it in your MyWebsite folder.

Macromedia Flash MX 2004 Workspace

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