Macromedia studio 8-exploring studio 8 User Manual

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Studio Basics

Using the Tools panel

The tools in the Tools panel let you draw, paint, select, and modify 
artwork, as well as change the view of the Stage. The Tools panel is divided 
into four sections:

■

The tools area contains drawing, painting, and selection tools.

■

The view area contains tools for zooming and panning in the 
application window.

■

The colors area contains modifiers for stroke and fill colors.

■

The options area displays modifiers for the currently selected tool. 
Modifiers affect the tool’s painting or editing operations.

Using the Customize Tools panel dialog box, you can specify which tools 
to display in the Flash authoring environment. For more information, see 

For information on using the drawing and painting tools, see “About Flash 
drawing and painting tools” in Using Flash. For information on using the 
selection tools, see “Selecting objects” in Using Flash. For information on 
using the view modification tools, see 

To show or hide the Tools panel: 

■

Select Window > Tools.

Selecting tools

You can select tools by clicking in the Tools panel, or by using a keyboard 
shortcut.

To select a tool, do one of the following:

■

Click the tool you want to use. Depending on the tool you select, a set 
of modifiers may be displayed in the options area at the bottom of the 
Tools panel.

■

Press the tool’s keyboard shortcut. You can view the keyboard shortcuts 
by selecting Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts.

■

To select a tool located in the pop-up menu for a visible tool such as the 
Rectangle tool, press the icon of the visible tool and select another tool 
from the pop-up menu.

000_ExploringStudio.book  Page 76  Tuesday, August 30, 2005  9:30 AM