Working in Flash > Creating a new document and opening a new window |  |

Creating a new document and opening a new window

Each time you open Flash, the application creates a new file with the FLA extension. You can create additional new Flash documents as you work. To set the size, frame rate, background color, and other properties of a new document, you use the Document Properties dialog box.

You can also open a template as a new document. You can choose from standard templates that ship with Flash, or open a template you have saved previously. For information on saving a document file as a template, see Saving Flash documents.

You can open a new window as you work.

To create a new document and set its properties:

1 | Choose File > New.
2 | Choose Modify > Document.
| The Document Properties dialog box appears.
3 | For Frame Rate, enter the number of animation frames to be displayed every second. For most computer-displayed animations, especially those playing from a Web site, 8 fps (frames per second) to 12 fps is sufficient. (12 fps is the default frame rate.)
4 | For Dimensions, do one of the following:
| To specify the Stage size in pixels, enter values in the Width and Height text boxes.
| The default movie size is 550 x 400 pixels. The minimum size is 1 x 1 pixels; the maximum is 2880 x 2880 pixels.
| To set the Stage size so that there is equal space around the content on all sides, click the Contents button to the right of Match. To minimize movie size, align all elements to the upper left corner of the Stage, and then click Contents.
| To set the Stage size to the maximum available print area, click Printer. This area is determined by the paper size minus the current margin selected in the Margins area of the Page Setup dialog box (Windows) or the Print Margins dialog box (Macintosh).
| To set the Stage size to the default size, click Default.
5 | To set the background color of your movie, click the triangle in the Background Color box and select a color from the palette.
6 | To specify the unit of measure for rulers that you can display along the top and side of the application window, select an option from the pop-up menu in the upper right. See Using rulers. (This setting also determines the units used in the Info panel.)
7 | Do one of the following:
| To make the new settings the default properties for your new document only, click OK.
| To make these settings the default properties for all new documents, click Make Default.

To open a template as a new document:

1 | Choose File > New from Template.
2 | In the New Document dialog box, select a category from the Category list, and select a document from the Category Items list.
3 | Click OK.

To open a new window in the current document:

Choose Window > New Window.