MACROMEDIA FLASH 8-USING FLASH, Use Manual, Page: 339 / 678

Understanding screen-based documents and the screen authoring environment (Flash Professional only) 339
You cannot create a preloader within a screen-based document, because all screens in a
document are located on the first frame of the root Timeline, so you cannot call or load other
frames.
Slide screens and form screens (Flash Professional
only)
You can create two types of screens in a document: slide screens and form screens. A Flash
Slide Presentation uses the slide screen as the default screen type. A Flash Form Application
uses the form screen as the default screen type. However, you can mix slide screens and form
screens in any screen-based document to take advantage of the functionality of each type of
screen and create more complex structure in a presentation or application.
You can set parameters for slide or form screens in the Property inspector. For more
information, see
“Setting parameters for a screen (Flash Professional only)” on page 349 . You
can also use ActionScript to control screens. For more information, see “Screen class (Flash
Professional only)”, “Form class (Flash Professional only)”, and “Slide class (Flash Professional
only)”, in the
Components Language Reference .
Slide screens let you create Flash documents with sequential content, such as a slide show. The
default runtime behavior lets users navigate sequentially through slide screens, using the left
and right arrow keys. Sequential screens can overlay one another so that the previous screen
remains visible when the next slide is viewed. Screens can continue playing after they are
hidden. Use slide screens when you want the visibility of each screen to be managed
automatically.
Form screens let you create structured form-based applications, such as online registration or
e-commerce forms. Form screens are simple containers that you use to structure a form-based
application. By default, to create the navigation structure with form screens, you must
write ActionScript. Use form screens when you want to manage the visibility of individual
screens yourself.
About organizing code for screens
There are three places you can place code in a screen-based application:
■
On the Timeline
■
On screens and symbol instances
■
In an external file