1. With the Property inspector open, in the Tools panel, choose a tool that cre-ates strokes. (The pen, line, rectangle, oval, rectangle-primitive, oval-primitive, polystar, pencil, and ink-bottle tools all create strokes.)
The Fill and Stroke section appears in the Property inspector, displaying cur-rent stroke settings for the selected tool.
2. To select a stroke color, do the following:
> In the Fill and Stroke section of the Property inspector (or in the Tools panel), click the Stroke Color con-trol—the color chip identified by a pencil icon.
> A set of swatches pops up; as you move the pointer over the swatches, it changes to an eyedropper
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.> Click the swatch with the desired color (or use any of the techniques described in Step 3 of the preceding task).
3. To set the stroke’s weight, in the Stroke field, enter a number between 0.10 and 200, or drag the slider next to the field
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Clicking the Stroke Color control (the color chip identified by a pencil icon) in the Fill and Stroke section of the Property inspector opens a set of color swatches and provides an eyedropper pointer for selecting a new color.B
Entering a new value in the Stroke field sets the weight, or thickness, for strokes created by tools that draw strokes.Type new value Select value
using slider
4. To set the stroke’s style, choose one from the Style pop-up menu
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.There are seven styles to choose from:
Hairline, Solid, Dashed, Dotted, Ragged, Stippled, and Hatched.
5. To set the way a solid or hairline stroke ends, from the Cap pop-up menu, choose a cap style.
> None ends the stroke exactly where you stop drawing it.
> Round extends the stroke by half the current stroke height, creating a rounded end.
> Square extends the stroke by half the current stroke height, creating a square end
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.6. To set the way solid or hairline strokes meet, click the Join pop-up menu.
> Miter creates a sharp corner.
> Round creates a slightly curved corner.
> Bevel creates a slightly flattened corner
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.The Tools panel displays two buttons for setting basic stroke and fill colors quickly.
Clicking the overlapping black and white squares sets the Stroke Color control to black and the Fill Color control to white. Clicking the small squares with an arrow next to them makes the current stroke and fill colors change places.
In Flash, the hairline setting is consid-ered a stroke style—not thickness—or stroke height. (Use the stroke-style pop-up menu to get the Hairline setting.) Hairlines in a symbol don’t change thickness when you resize the symbol. That’s often what you want when you make the symbol larger; when you make the symbol smaller, the stroke may seem too heavy. Other lines in a symbol grow thicker or thinner as you scale the symbol up or down.
(To learn about symbols, see Chapter 7.)
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Choose a stroke style from the pop-up menu in the Fill and Stroke section of the Property inspector.Selected stroke style
Preview of current stroke settings
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Set a Cap style in the Fill and Stroke section of the Property inspector to control the look of the ends of lines. The None option keeps the line’s original length and makes the end flat; Round extends and rounds the line’s end;and Square extends and squares off the end.
Square Round None
Creating Simple Graphics 45 To constrain the way strokes scale in your published movie, with a stroke (or stroke-creating tool) selected, choose a setting from the Scale menu in the Fill and Stroke section of the Property inspector. In the default (Nor-mal) mode, a 1-pixel stroke becomes a 2-pixel stroke if your final movie gets enlarged to 200 percent. To prevent a selected stroke from scaling at all, choose None. To allow the stroke to scale in one direction only, choose Horizon-tal or Vertical.
To ensure crisp lines in your final output, select the Hinting checkbox in the Fill and Stroke section of the Property inspector. With-out hinting, lines sometimes appear slightly blurry on some monitors.
You can modify Flash’s stroke styles.
You might, for example, want larger dots in the dotted line or bigger spaces in the dashed line.
Select a stroke-creating tool; in the Fill and Stroke section of the Property inspector, select the stroke style you want to modify, and then click the Edit Stroke Style button (the pencil icon). The Stroke Style dialog appears, in which you can assign new settings. Click OK to close the dialog and confirm the settings. Those set-tings continue in force for that style until you change them or end the work session.
You can also set stroke color from any Stroke Color control (in the Property inspec-tor, the Tools panel, or the Color panel). Click the Stroke Color control, and select a color as described in “Setting Fill Attributes,” earlier in this chapter.
You can set the Join property for rect-angles created with the rectangle-primitive tool, but you’ll only see the joins on sharp corners (those with a corner radius setting of 0 or less).
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Set a join style in the Fill and Stroke section of the Property inspector to control the way lines connect. Miter makes a pointed corner; Round makes a rounded corner; and Bevel slices a flat piece off the corner.Choosing Miter activates the Miter hot text, which accepts values between 1 and 60. With Miter set to 1, Flash flattens the join slightly by slicing off the very tip of the point; the flat area is smaller than in a bevel join. Settings of 2 and above create a very sharp point.
Miter (set to 1) Miter (set to 2)
Round
Bevel