| Fading Text in Flash |  |
Start Flash, Create a new Movie.
Make the work area the size you need or just use the default.
Choose the text tool 'A' from the Tools Palette, third down on the right hand side, next to the pen. Click in the work area and type out your first word. Then click and drag across the word to highlight it and change its font, size and colour using the Properties palette, as shown below.
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If you need to move it, select the Black Arrow at the top left of the tool palette, then click and drag the word. To fade text or any object, we need to make it a "Symbol" first: click with the Black Arrow (top left in Tools palette) on your text to select it. Now from the menu at the top of your screen go to Insert > Convert to Symbol, name it (perhaps "Fade1") and for behavior choose "Graphic" rather than Movie Clip or Button. Next click on the timeline in the gray area to the right of Layer 1 and just below the number 60 and choose Insert > Keyframe to give yourself four or five seconds of animation. (At 15 frames per second the animation will last 60 frames divided by 15 frames per second = 4 seconds, or at 12 fps 60/12 = 5 seconds) (It is quicker in Flash to use the contextual menu feature. On a Mac if you had held down your Control Key 'ctrl' when you clicked on Frame 60 a mini-menu would have popped up from which you could choose "Insert Keyframe". On Windows and Macs with two button mice you get this pop up menu by right clicking). |
For a "fade in" now click on the keyframe dot in the timeline at frame 1, for a "fade out" click on keyframe 60...
Select your text Symbol with the Black Arrow tool. Your properties palette should look like the one shown below. From the Color drop down menu on the right of the palette choose Alpha.
Click on the little triangle to the right of the Alpha 100% box and drag down the fader to 0%.
Click on the keyframe dot in the timeline at Frame 1 and then select your text symbol again with the Black Arrow tool. On the "Properties" panel, use the Tween drop down menu. This is currently set to "None" but click on "None" and choose "Motion". This should link the keyframe dots from Frame 1 to Frame 60 with an arrow on a blue background. If instead this looks like a dotted line something has gone wrong, usually because one or other keyframe has an element that is not a graphic symbol. Start again!
Rewind and play, or Save and then to see your finished .swf movie press Apple Return (Ctrl Return on Windows).
This process works for objects such as squares and circles, shapes drawn with the pen or pencil or even imported jpegs, pngs and quicktime or avi movies - each must first be converted into a symbol before you can apply a motion tween.
If you want more than one tween happening at the same time MAKE A NEW
LAYER for each tweened object.