Workspace
Today, we will discuss the foundation of the Flash workspace, take a peek at different styles, and learn how to customize your own Flash layout so that it works best for you and of course looks the way you want! This is the fun part of workspaces. Give your new one a chance: save your custom layout and jump back into the action! Before we begin coding it is important to get a basic understanding of the Flash workspace. Learn all about the panels and study which shortcuts will make coding easier and faster for you.
Working in Flash: Cs5 workspace
You can change your workspace to your favorite layout. You want your panels in a different place? Drag them there. Don't want a particular panel (or panels cluttering up your workspace?) Close it/them. Everything is very fluid, so tinker with them and move things wherever you'd like. If you want to add panels, go to the window tab, and click on the panel of your choice. You can save your new layout, and it will not affect your actual file in any way. Set up several different ones to try out - have fun!Our workspace video transcript
Video Transcript
00:00So this video we're going to dig into essential in well, essentially we're going to dig into our workspaces
00:06And by default the workspace both in cs4 and cs5 is the essentials workspace
00:13Well in cs3 the layout is probably more similar to something that was coined in cs4 to be called
00:21Classic now if you're in cs3 right now, then you don't really have this panel and what you have is your window
00:28Workspaces you don't even have access to it before you create a new file
00:32So because of that we're going to first create a new file also because it just makes sense because almost everything here is disabled and muted out
00:39Until we actually have a working file and we don't have access to many different libraries many different panels that are
00:48Available as soon as you have your flash file open and when I'm saying my flash file
00:52I'm referring to an FLA in our case an AS3
00:57FLA, so I'm going to click on a new FLA
01:00Let me stutter more a new flash file action script 3.0 file
01:06Doesn't really matter if you're in cs3 405 just open up your file now that we have our file open
01:12Let's talk about the layout
01:15Personally, I'm just used to just from working in cs3 and I kind of ported the same kind of mythology or like I just like the
01:22way I worked in cs3
01:24nothing bad about the new essentials view in cs4 or cs5 I
01:30was just comfortable with it and what's brilliant brilliant about Adobe is they didn't take away my
01:36Control of setting it up the way I like to set it up
01:39And the way we could do that is just by clicking on our essentials menu or going through our window
01:45Workspaces and selecting the classic view by selecting the classic view we're going to be in a mode
01:52That's more similar
01:54to the older way where your timeline was on the top and your content was in the center fold and your tools for designing and
02:03Illustrating and so on would be on your left hand and all the other panels would be minimized on your right side
02:11Now with that said
02:13Let's
02:14Revisit back to essentials for a second just for the sake of playing around with the layouts with that said you don't really have to keep
02:21The layout the way it is even if you like essentials or you like any one of the other ones you could just check them
02:26And see which layout makes more sense to you if you like this layout, or you know
02:31You're never going to work with the motion editor, so why not get rid of it. So just drag it out
02:36Close it
02:38Maybe you want your timeline on the top or minimized you want it on the top grab it put it on top
02:43You want to minimize double click on it double click to open it you want to give it less space give it less space
02:49It's really amount of tinkering it everything here is very fluid, which is really really brilliant
02:53So you could grab your library as well. Let's say we want our library to be on the side here
02:58Well, we wanted to stick it so we want it to be here now
03:02Obviously, this is starting to look really ugly
03:04But I hope the point is get is here that you could play around with this as much as you want
03:10Now in cs3 by default our properties panel will be down here and most chances are you wouldn't really move it around
03:16But obviously you're more than welcome to move anything anywhere you want
03:19It's up to you really just about how where you're comfortable and how do you like things to be set up?
03:25Personally well, I'm not gonna save this because it's a really bad layout
03:28But if we like this layout and you were convenient comfortable with it
03:32We could grab go into our window again into our workspace and create a new workspace
03:38By clicking on new
03:40Workspace it's going to prompt and ask me to give it a name and that will enable me to save this layout
03:45Which I didn't save it because I don't even like it
03:49So I'll click on cancel now. I could on the other hand
03:53Create a layout that I do like and allow it that I do like is been which I pre-saved already earlier, which is basically
04:00just kind of similar to the classic view where my timeline is on the top and the big difference which is not that big is
04:07That my properties panel is right here
04:10Okay, so it's kind of like for me. I like that my output is right here
04:14My compiling errors are right here. So as we're running the application for me, that's most organized now
04:20obviously when you're watching the videos if
04:22Things don't look exactly the same
04:24They don't have to look exactly the same as long as you could find the different output windows at the different
04:29The different panels that are important and we're gonna touch all those panels in this intro video
04:35Alrighty now
04:37Next thing I wanted to talk about is let's head
04:39Let's see how you could create your own Ben panel before well or your own panel if you want to work in a panel similar
04:44So I'm gonna select classic because it's close to what I like and what I'm missing here is I'm missing my properties, right?
04:52I'm actually not missing my properties my properties is there. Oh, let me reset classic
04:57Here we go. So this is how classic looks like by default, right? This is I already tinkered with it earlier
05:03So that's the reason why I look differently. So what I've done
05:05All I really did is dragged out my properties and after I drag my properties out
05:10I just added it into the top and now it's in the top of my list and I got my properties and I could probably make
05:16It a little bit bigger. So it's easier to see all the content inside as we click into it and click it out of it and
05:22That that way it keeps my main center area cleaner now. I'm missing here a few panels. I'm missing my trace
05:29I'm gonna go to window and I'm gonna look for trace. Where is trace? Well, we want compiling errors as well
05:37Output so output is our trace. I'm sorry
05:40It's called output but we trace into it and you'll see what I mean in later videos
05:44well in this course, we're gonna see what that means so we have our output panel and I just want to add in as well my
05:53Compiler errors window and it's perfect. This is exactly where I want it. This is the layout. I like having
06:00Now I could save it but I already saved it before so I don't need to save it
06:04okay, so I could just
06:06Reset it back the classic to the way the classic is supposed to be go into my bend view and we are in my bend view and
06:13That's all we really need to do to be in the same similar layout as I'm working on and that's basically all you really
06:20Need to know about work working with workspaces
06:23Just find the workspace that you're comfortable with it doesn't affect anyone else. It's not saved into the file
06:28Itself, it's actually saved into your configurations of your editor and it's really unique for you
06:35So really you could do anything you want
06:37It doesn't affect anyone but your computer and it doesn't affect the files that you're saving
