Working in Flash > Setting preferences in Flash |  |

Setting preferences in Flash

Flash lets you set preferences for general application operations, editing operations, and Clipboard operations. See also Choosing drawing settings.

To set preferences:

1 | Choose Edit > Preferences.
2 | Click the General, Editing, Clipboard, Warning, or ActionScript Editor tab, and choose from the respective options as described in the procedures that follow. For more information on ActionScript Editor preferences, see Setting Actions panel preferences.

To set general preferences, choose from the following options:

| For Undo Levels, enter a value from 0 to 200 to set the number of undo/redo levels. Undo levels require memory; the more undo levels you use, the more system memory is taken up. The default is 100.
| For Printing Options (Windows only), select Disable PostScript to disable PostScript output when printing to a PostScript printer. By default, this option is deselected. Select this option if you have problems printing to a PostScript printer, but keep in mind that this will slow down printing.
| For Selection Options, select or deselect Shift Select to control how Flash handles selection of multiple elements. When Shift Select is off, clicking additional elements adds them to the current selection. When Shift Select is on, clicking additional elements deselects other elements unless you hold down the Shift key.
| Select Show Tooltips to display tooltips when the pointer pauses over a control. Deselect this option if you don't want to see the tooltips.
| For Timeline Options, select Disable Timeline Docking to keep the Timeline from attaching itself to the application window once it has been separated into its own window. For more information, see Using the Timeline.
| Select Span Based Selection to use span-based selection in the Timeline, rather than the default frame-based selection (Flash 5 used span-based selection). For more information on span-based and frame-based selection, see Working with frames in the Timeline.
| Select Named Anchor on Scenes to have Flash make the first frame of each scene in a movie a named anchor. Named anchors let you use the Forward and Back buttons in a browser to jump from scene to scene in a movie. For more information, see Using named anchors.
| For Highlight Color, select Use This Color and select a color from the palette, or select Use Layer Color to use the current layer's outline color.
| For Font Mapping Default, select a font to use when substituting missing fonts in movies you open in Flash. See Substituting missing fonts.

To set editing preferences, choose from the following options:

| For Pen Tool options, see Setting Pen tool preferences.
| For Vertical Text options, select Default Text Orientation to make the default orientation of text vertical, which is useful for some Asian language fonts. By default, this option is deselected.
| Select Right to Left Text Flow to reverse the default text display direction. This option is deselected by default.
| Select No Kerning to turn off kerning for vertical text. This option is deselected by default, but is useful to improve spacing for some fonts that use kerning tables.
| For Drawing Settings, see Choosing drawing settings.

To set Clipboard preferences, choose from the following options:

| For Bitmaps (Windows only), select options for Color Depth and Resolution to specify these parameters for bitmaps copied to the Clipboard. Select Smooth to apply anti-aliasing. Enter a value in the Size Limit text box to specify the amount of RAM that is used when placing a bitmap image on the Clipboard. Increase this value when working with large or high-resolution bitmap images. If your computer has limited memory, choose None.
| For Gradients (Windows only), choose an option to specify the quality of gradient fills placed in the Windows Metafile. Choosing a higher quality increases the time required to copy artwork. Use this setting to specify gradient quality when pasting items to a location outside of Flash. When you are pasting within Flash, the full gradient quality of the copied data is preserved regardless of the Gradients on Clipboard setting.
| For PICT Settings (Macintosh only), for Type, select Objects to preserve data copied to the Clipboard as vector artwork, or select one of the bitmap formats to convert the copied artwork to a bitmap. Enter a value for Resolution. Select Include PostScript to include PostScript data. For Gradients, choose an option to specify gradient quality in the PICT. Choosing a higher quality increases the time required to copy artwork. Use the Gradients setting to specify gradient quality when pasting items to a location outside of Flash. When you are pasting within Flash, the full gradient quality of the copied data is preserved regardless of the Gradient setting.
| For FreeHand Text, select Maintain Text as Blocks to keep text editable in a pasted FreeHand file.

To set warning preferences, choose one of the following options:

| Select Warn on Save for Macromedia Flash 5 Compatibility to have Flash warn you when you try to save documents with Flash MX-specific content to a Flash 5 file. This option is selected by default.
| Select Warn on Missing Fonts to have Flash warn you when you open a Flash document that uses fonts that are not installed on your computer. This option is selected by default.
| Select Warn on Loss of Expert Mode Formatting to have Flash warn you of any expert mode formatting that will be lost when you switch to normal mode in the Actions panel. This option is selected by default.
| Select Warn on Reading Generator Content to have Flash display a red "X" over any Generator objects, as a reminder that Generator objects are not supported in Flash MX.
| Select Warn on Inserting Frames when Importing Content to have Flash alert you when it inserts frames in your document to accommodate audio or video files that you import.