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Flash Quirks

Terminology

Movie: This is the entire Flash project.
Scene: Like a scene in a movie, this is just a way to organize within your Flash movie. Otherwise it can become unmanageable fairly quickly.
Layer: A layer is an organizational tool used in a scene. You may work on each layer independently, but they work together in real-time to make the scene appear. Think of a transparency of the sun put over a transparency of the earth. By moving one or the other, action takes place within the scene.
Symbol: A symbol is an object like a car. It is available for you to use in your movie (accessed from your Library) once you add it to the Library by converting the object to a symbol.
Library: A collection of symbols.
Instance: An occurrence of a symbol in the movie.
Frame: A slice of time like a frame in a movie.
Keyframe: A keyframe is a frame in which you define a change in an animation or include frame actions to modify a movie (definition taken from Flash Help).

When converting an object to a symbol, the default behavior of the symbol is "movie" as in a Quicktime movie; however, the symbol behavior is usually a graphic (circle, car, penny). Make sure you choose the correct radio button!
Animation is applied on a layer by layer basis. This means each symbol you wish to animate in a scene must be in its own layer. Plenty of flat heads over this one.
Flash is a movie so it will plow through your frames unless you tell it to stop on a frame.
"Paste in Place" is your friend.
Double-clicking a Library symbol allows you to edit the symbol. All instances of this symbol will reflect your changes.
Be careful that you click in a frame to work on that particular frame.
No "auto" save. Save that file!

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