Flash Tip: Maximizing Workspace in Flash MX

Quick Tip

From Adrien-Luc Sanders,
Working in Flash MX can get pretty crowded; you've got your timeline up top, your properties below, tools to the left, and an entire enormous block of panels taking up the right side of your screen and stubbornly refusing to budge--and that's just if you're working in design mode, not even touching the action scripting toolsets.

It can leave you working in a horrifically small area, especially if you're on a 1024x768-resolution monitor, like myself. (Those of you with massive high-res flatscreens can stop laughing now.) But although it's hard to work around the panel sets, you can still increase your work area with a few quick and easy key-clicks, so you're not left with your nose pressed against the screen trying to follow a particular detail in your animation, or working zoomed in at such close quarters that you can't tell what you're tweaking.

The easiest way to do this is to use your keyboard shortcuts to remove the left-hand toolbar, the timeline, and the lower properties panel when you don't need them, only to call them up quickly again when you do.

Left-hand toolbar: Ctrl+F2(PC) or Cmd+F2(Mac)
Timeline: Ctrl+Alt+T(PC) or Cmd+Option+T(Mac)
Properties panel: Ctrl+F3(PC) or Cmd+F3(Mac)

You can also turn them off manually by going to the Window menu set and clicking on the individual names to turn them on and off, but it'll save you a lot of time if you get used to using these keyboard shortcuts.

Practice with it, and soon you'll be flipping back and forth easily and efficiently, and you'll be able to zoom in on your stage so that it expands to fill a larger work area, only overlapping it with the missing panels when you need to switch tools or change properties.

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