Creating a button in Flash

Today I created simple buttons with the use of flash, this is to give me the experience to help me when working up my own website. I can use this simple method to develop up a better looking and complicated button for a professional website.

The first thing I did was create an Action Script 2 document and I drew a square of which I will then turn into my button. I did this by going to modify - Convert symbol. I gave the name Button 1 and then changed the type which is known as the element to Button.

Press cmd L to get the library up which shows the button so that if wanted you can drag this onto the page to have more buttons (helpful for a webpage).

Double click on the button and it comes up with a grid on the button, this is to show that the button is a vector, there is also a blue box around it and a cross in the corner to show you that it is a button. When double clicking on the button you get a new timeline come up which displays the programming of the button/ button settings.

There is 4 states to a button, these are:
 Up - Normal state
Over - Hover state
Down - Hold down state
Hit - Click state

Each state should be different to define the button more. For example the colours would be different for all states BUT the down state and the hit state will be the same colour. To make this happen you need to insert the button onto each state but this is by going to Insert - Timeline - Keyframe

This copies the button onto the next page and then you can change the colour to show it is a different state of the button.

After we finished this we clicked on scene 1 which took us to the original timeline and not the shape programming/ settings. We then saved this as a flash document format (fla) and pressed cmd enter to view the button and test it to see how it works or if it work.

You can add text to the button but to do this you should write it on the page then place it onto the button. Click on the text and copy it, instead of pasting it onto the next state with cmd v instead press shift cmd v. This will then place the text onto the same positioning as on the previous state instead of the middle of the page.