Panel Sets and Customizing Your Interface

1.There are many extra small windows called Panels, which add extra functionality to Flash and can be opened through the Window menu. These will be covered in more detail in the chapter that covers their individual functions.
2. If all of the Panels were to open at once you would need a really large monitor to see them all! This is not necessary, however, because you can customize your interface to suit the way in which you are working.
3. The easiest way to customize your interface is to press F4 to hide or open Tools, Panels, and Properties.

4.The Timeline and the Panels can all be collapsed. This is done by clicking on the little triangle to the left of the window’s name.

6.The Panels are all dockable. This means you can group them with other Panels or change their position. If you move your mouse so that the cursor is over the Panel handle, the icon will turn into a hand. You can now drag a Panel out of a docked position.

7.If you want to add a Panel to a group of Panels so that it will become docked, drag the Panel over the position that you want it to have in the Panel group. You will see a dark line overlapping the position this Panel will take. Let go and the Panel will be in its new position.

8.To float the Toolbar if you are using a PC, click then drag on an empty area. This detaches it from the default position allowing you to change the work area. All Panels in the Windows version can be detached in a similar way including the Timeline and Properties Inspector.

9.There are some clever keyboard shortcuts that you can use with Panels. If you select CMND/CTRL+ ALT+TAB this puts a ‘focus’ on the Timeline or uppermost Panel. You can then press this key combination again to cycle through all of the open Panels.
10. Once you have a Panel in ‘focus’, then the Up and Down arrow keys also cycle through the Panels and the Space Bar collapses/expands the Panel in ‘focus’.

11. When you have selected the Panels you want to use and moved them into your preferred position, you can save the Panel layout. In fact, you could save different layouts for working in different areas of the program, for example, drawing, animating, creating buttons, etc.

12.To do this, go to Window> Save Panel Layout, name your Panel arrangement and click OK. This arrangement will now be available for you in Window> Panel Sets.
13. The Panels that I find most useful from a Designer’s perspective to save into a Panel set are the following: color mixer, color swatches, transform, align, actions, and behaviors.