Flash CS4 Professional in 24 Hours- P3: The creation of this book could not have happened without the skill and patience of many, many people at Sams Publishing. Most of all, I want to thank Mark Taber for offering me this opportunity and Philip Kerman for writing such a great book. I also greatly appreciate the efforts of Songlin Qiu for keeping me on track and organized, not an easy task. | Tools 51 TRY IT YOURSELF 6. Finally while still holding down the mouse button you can increase or decrease the distance you re dragging from the point you clicked. This Use the Pen Tool changes the curve s arc. Before your hand gets tired move the mouse to the right. Then double-click down to the right at about the same height as the first point to make an arc. Even though this curve has three points only the middle one needs a curve that is when you create the first and last points you don t click and drag. You can edit any drawn shape in the same manner in which you drew lines with the Pen tool in the preceding task. You just select a shape by using the Subselect tool the white arrow at the top right of the Tools panel and you see the same handles and anchor points as in the preceding task. Creating Text Now for a graphic element that involves neither line nor fill. In this section you explore creating text. To create text you simply select the Text tool click and start typing. When you first make the text if you click and drag you are setting the margins otherwise the margins adapt to what you re typing. You can modify the font color and style of what you ve typed after you create it. Modifying your text after it s typed usually makes sense because then you are able to best judge how it looks. Creating text in Flash has never been easier or more sophisticated. The following task walks you through a couple quick maneuvers. In this task you explore using text in Flash. Follow these steps 1. In a new file select the Text tool click the Stage and then type a word we typed Hello. This click-and-type technique expands the margin for the block of text to the exact width of whatever you type. The circle that appears at the top-right corner of the text block indicates the margin automatically adjusts in this way see Figure . 2. When you click and drag this circle to adjust the width it turns into a square to indicate the margins are fixed. You can double-click the .
