- By having a small black outline of a circle in them. (this frame is empty, no objects)
- By having a solid black dot in them. (Objects are in this frame)
All other normal frames appear empty, as they are by default.
In general, when you want to make a change in what's happening in the movie, you convert a normal frame into a Keyframe.
To convert a normal frame into a keyframe:
Simply right-click (Mac: control-click) in the frame block, and a pop-up menu opens. When it does, you choose "Insert Keyframe" from the options. Every movie must start with a Keyframe. As soon as you create an object in the 1st frame, Flash automatically converts the empty frame into a keyframe, and the default circle outline becomes a solid dot.
When creating shapes:
Set their colour and stroke properties first before you draw them.
eg. Click on the Circle tool in the tool palette. Now press the colour swatch just below the tool palette. Choose a colour for the circle from the pop-out palette. If you're going to use a border around your shape, set its attributes also.
When using the drawing tools:
If you want a shape to be perfectly symetrical, press and hold down the Shift key while you drag the tool across the canvas.
If you don't want a border around your object:
Immediately after using the Circular or Square drawing tools, press and hold the Ctrl key (Mac: Command). This changes the shape tool temporarily into the Selection tool.
Now line up the tip of the pointer on the outermost edge of your shape, and click once. You should see a selected border appear around the shape. Let go of the Ctrl key, and press the Delete key. If your background is white (or any light colour), the border will be easily visible and most likely black.
Note: If your shape becomes selected, click outside of it to deselect it, and try again.
If you're not getting any motion:
Flash 4 will let you know when there's a problem with any frames you've tried to assign motion tweening to, by putting a dashed line between the frames instead of a solid line. This will usually point to a problem with the object created on the latter keyframe. Check to make sure you inserted a 'Keyframe' there and not just a 'frame'. The simplest way to fix this is to delete the last frame you made in the sequence, and re-insert a new Keyframe.
