01. Introduction to Timeline Effects 02. Timeline Helpers 03. Assistants 04. Effects 05. Transform/Transition

06. Applying multiple effects  07. Behaviors: controversial interactivity 1  08. Behaviors: controversial interactivity 2  09. Behaviors: controversial interactivity 3  10. Wrap up

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05. Timeline Effects: Transform/Transition

To me, the Transform/Transition Timeline Effects seem as though they might be the most useful for a broad range of uses. These Effects allow you to quickly animate several properties of a Symbol at one time and give you the added benefit of being able to go back and adjust those properties after the fact as the need arises.

Lets start with the Transform Effect.

1. Create a new Flash Document.
2. Select the Text Tool and create a Text Field on the Stage. Type some text into the text field.
3. With the Text Field Selected, apply the Transform Effect ( Insert->Timeline Effects->Transform/Transition-> Transform )
   
   
   
   The Transform Effect dialog box offers many options: you can choose the duration, in frames, for the transformation, the distance to move by or destination to move to, the scale of the Symbol, the rotation direction and frequency, the color tint, the alpha, and the easing applied to the tween. Essentially, it offers many of the properties that you might usually be clicking around to find in many different areas of the Flash authoring environment, right in one simple dialog box.
   
4. The great thing about most of these effects is that they are instantly viewable without needing to actually test the movie using (Control->Test Movie).
   
   

Now onto our last Effect, Transition.

1. Create a new Flash Document.
2. On the stage, create a solid circle shape.
3. On top of the circle shape, create a Text Field and enter some text into it.
   
   
   
4. With both objects on the Stage selected, apply the Transition Effect ( Insert->Timeline Effects->Transform/Transition-> Transition )
   
   
   
5. In the Transition dialog box, experiment with the settings until you find one that suits you. One thing I found when testing out any of the Timeline Effects is that initially setting the duration to a smaller number like 10 frames made updating the preview much quicker. then when you have the desired effect, you can extend the duration and press the "OK" button to commit the change.
   
6. When you are ready, click the "OK" button to apply your Transition settings and test your movie ( Control->Test Movie )
   
   

That's it! If you close your test movie and select the object on the Stage, you will notice that Flash automatically groups multiple items into one Symbol for you. You can edit the parameters of the effect at any point, but if you need to make individual adjustments to the separate items in the Symbol, you either have to remove the effect or poke around in your Library to find the individual Symbol that might exist for you to edit without permanently losing the option to change the effect parameters.

Those are all the Timeline Effects that ship with Flash MX 2004. Hopefully this gives you a good starting point for experimenting with them. As you can see, the Timeline Effects ease the task of creating those effects you might find yourself doing over and over for a project or across projects. Beyond the effects themselves, one useful way to use Timeline Effects is to apply them and then edit the Symbol ( Edit->Edit In Place ). After agreeing to the fact that you will no longer be able to adjust the Effect parameters, you will now have had Flash do the work of, perhaps, duplicating a symbol 40 times in a grid, or doing a fading and shrinking tween, on which you can now continue to build. This may open the door for you to create some interesting and unique results than just with the Timeline Effects alone.

Before moving on, I wanted to go over a couple of tricks that might help you out when you are using these effects.

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