571 C : C, U,  A T Formatting Characters and Paragraphs 3 4 // Define variables, instances of TLFTextField and TextFormat 5 var tlfBanner:TLFTextField = new TLFTextField(); 6 var txtFormat:TextFormat = new TextFormat(); 7 var txtFormatItalic:TextFormat = new TextFormat(); 8 9 // Assign a string literal to the .text property of the TLFTextField 10 tlfBanner.text = "Stutz Motor Company\nHome of the legendary Stutz Bearcat"; 11 12 // Position and size properties 13 tlfBanner.x = 40; 14 tlfBanner.y = 40; 15 tlfBanner.width = 220; 16 tlfBanner.height = 160; 17 18 // Background and border properties 19 // Remember to set the .background and .border properties to "true" 20 tlfBanner.border = true; 21 tlfBanner.borderColor = 0x993300; 22 tlfBanner.borderWidth = 5; 23 tlfBanner.background = true; 24 tlfBanner.backgroundColor = 0xFFFFCC; 25 tlfBanner.backgroundAlpha = 1; 26 27 // Padding properties determine the distance between the text 28 // and the edge of the text field 29 tlfBanner.paddingTop = 24; 30 tlfBanner.paddingLeft = 24; 31 tlfBanner.paddingRight = 24; 32 tlfBanner.paddingBottom = 24; 33 34 // Autosize permits the text field to grow to accommodate the text 35 tlfBanner.autoSize = TextFieldAutoSize.LEFT; 36 37 // Define text specifications like font, size and color 38 // through the txtFormat an instance of the TextFormat class 39 txtFormat.font = "Cooper Black"; 40 txtFormat.size = 20; 41 txtFormat.align = "center"; 42 43 // Here’s another TextFormat object that sets italics 44 txtFormatItalic.italic = true; 45 46 // Assign the format using the text field's .setTextFormat() method 47 // The second text format makes specific characters in the 48 // text field italic 49 tlfBanner.setTextFormat(txtFormat); 50 tlfBanner.setTextFormat(txtFormatItalic,32,41); 51 52 // The addChild method adds the text field to the Display List 53 // making it visible on the stage. 54 addChild(tlfBanner); Line 5 creates the text field called tlfBanner, and line 10 assigns a string literal to its text property. The lines from 12 through 35 tweak various text field properties 572 F CS: T M M Formatting with HTML and CSS changing its appearance and behavior. Lines 37 through 44 focus on setting proper- ties for TextFormat objects. On lines 49 and 50, two TextFormat objects are applied to the tlfBanner text field using the .setTextFormat method. The first one is applied to the entire text field, while the one on line 50 targets specific characters by position. When all is said and done, the text field looks like Figure 17-6 (shown in Flash Player). Figure 17-6: This text was created and format- ted entirely by ActionScript. Using the TextFormat object, you can ap- ply formatting to an entire block of text or to specific characters, as shown in the italic and bold words in this example Formatting with HTML and CSS When you’re working in ActionScript, there’s more than one way to format text. The previous technique using ActionScript’s TextFormat object works well when you’re working on a project on your own. The properties and methods are familiar if you’re used to working with Flash’s Properties panel. Flash also lets you use the same formatting tools used by web designers: HTML (hypertext markup language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). There are a few reasons why you might want to go this route for a project. Perhaps your project uses lots of text and it’s already format- ted using HTML. In some cases, you may be working on a large project where some people are responsible for generating the text and others are responsible for present- ing it on the Web or in a Flash-based program. HTML and CSS Philosophical Differences Before you make a decision about using either HTML or CSS for your Flash format- ting chores, it helps to understand their approaches to formatting text. HTML em- beds formatting codes inside the text. For example, the second line in the tlfBanner text field of the previous example might look like this if you formatted in HTML: <font face="Cooper Black" size="3"> Home of the <i>legendary</i> <b>Stutz Bearcat</b></font> When a web browser like Internet Explorer, Safari, or Chrome reads this text, it knows how to display the text in the browser window. It applies the formatting in- structions and shows the text. It displays the proper typeface if it’s available, other- wise it uses a substitute font. So HTML coding works fine from the audience point of view. For designers, it can be a bit of a pain. One of the problems of HTML coding 573 C : C, U,  A T Formatting with HTML and CSS is that the message gets a bit lost in the formatting tags. Complicated HTML coding is hard for human eyes to read, and that makes it easy to foul up. When you want to make changes, it’s a lot of work to go in there and tweak all those bits of embedded code. These days, the fashionable technique is to use CSS to format web pages. The un- derlying philosophy is that it’s best to separate the formatting from the content. You create styles (type specs) for body text, major headlines, subheads, captions, and so forth. You store those definitions in a style sheet. Then, in the text, you tag different portions, indicating the styles they should use. In effect, you say: This is a major headline, this is body text, and this is a caption. When the browser goes to display your web page, it comes to the text tagged as a headline, and then it looks up the type specs in the style sheet. It does the same thing for the body text and the captions. From a designer’s point of view, this system is a tremendous timesaver. If you want to change the caption style for a website that has 400 captioned pictures, all you need to do is edit one definition in the style sheet. If all those type specs were embedded HTML code, you’d need to make 400 separate edits. Note: Most web pages designed today use a combination of HTML and CSS to format pages. HTML is still the basic, underlying code for web pages. CSS, JavaScript, and Flash are technologies built on top of the HTML foundation. Using HTML Text in Flash There are two steps to using HTML encoded text in Flash. First, you need to create strings with the HTML codes embedded. Then you need to assign those strings to the htmlText property of the text field that will display the formatted text. When you want to use HTML with its embedded codes in a Flash project, you need to build strings of text that include all the HTML codes. That means you end up with a lot of angle brackets, equals signs, and quotes inside your strings. The quotes present a small challenge, because your string needs to be wrapped in quotes when it’s assigned to a variable or a text field (page 419). Fortunately, Flash accepts either single or double quotes. So if the HTML you’re embedding looks like this line: <p><font face="Cooper Black" size="3"> Home of the <i>legendary</i> <b>Stutz Bearcat</b></font></p> You can place it inside single quotes when you use it in Flash. For example, this state- ment assigns the HTML coded string to the txtBanner text field. It uses single quotes to define the string: tlfBanner.htmlText = '<p><font face="Cooper Black" size=24> Home of the <i> legendary</i> <b>Stutz Bearcat</b></font></p>'; HTML is like Flash in that it can use either single or double quotes in most places. Most of the time, you’ll use double quotes, but be aware that you may sometimes see single quotes used to assign values in HTML code. In that case, you’d use double quotes to define your string in Flash. 574 F CS: T M M Formatting with HTML and CSS Once you’ve stored your text in a string, you need to assign that string to a text field. Lucky for you, all TextField objects have an htmlText property, as shown in the code example above. It works just like the regular text property except that it understands how to read and then display text with HTML codes. As with any text field, you need to use the addChild() method to add your text field to the Display List and show it on the stage. Creating a Hyperlink with HTML If there’s one thing that made HTML king of the World Wide Web, it’s the hyperlink. Hyperlinks are the threads that form that web. Click a linked word, and suddenly you’re in a different part of the universe (or at least, the web). On page 218, you saw how to create hyperlinks using the standard Flash authoring tools. The ability of text fields to use HTML encoded text also enables them to use HTML links. You create the links using the usual HTML codes: <a> anchor tags. Here’s an example of an HTML hyperlink: <a> href="http://www.stutzbearcat.net">click me</a> Like most HTML tags, the anchor tag comes in pairs: <a>in between stuff</a>. The slash is the defining mark of an end tag. In HTML, you stuff that first tag with any necessary parameters. In this case, the parameter is a web address. The href stands for hypertext reference; the equals sign assigns a value to the reference inside double quotes. The specific value here is a web address. The words in between the two <a> tags, “click me,” are visible in the browser window. Depending on the tag’s formatting, they may appear underlined or highlighted in some way to show that they’re a link. Beyond that there’s no magic to adding and using HTML hyperlinks in Flash. Here’s an example of the same link included in a string that’s passed to the htmlText prop- erty of a text field: txtBanner.htmlText = '<p>To visit our website <a> href="http://www. stutzbearcat.net">click me</a> </p>'; Flash Player isn’t a web browser, so when your audience clicks the link, their browser opens and then loads the web page specified in the link. The link can just as easily point to a file on the local computer. In that case, instead of the http:// reference, you’d use a file:// reference. Note: You can find HTML examples in 17-6_HTML_Text.fla in the Missing CD (www.missingmanuals. com/cds). There are a lot of HTML tags and keywords and Flash only works with some of them. A com- plete list of HTML tags that work with Flash is included in the help document ActionScript 3.0 Reference for the Adobe Flash Platform. Look up the Textfield class and its htmlText property. Using CSS to Format Classic Text in Flash CSS is the acronym for Cascading Style Sheets—an ingenious system for formatting HTML text. If you want to read up on how CSS works, you can get an excellent introduction in David Sawyer McFarland’s CSS: The Missing Manual (O’Reilly). 575 C : C, U,  A T Formatting with HTML and CSS You need to have a basic understanding of CSS to use with Flash. This book provides a quick overview of CSS and an example or two to get you started. CSS style sheets are a little like those wooden Russian dolls where one object is nested inside another. Starting from the outside and working in, here’s what you find in a CSS style sheet. A style sheet is a list of formatting specifications. Each formatting spec has a selector that identifies the HTML tag that it formats. That tag could be the paragraph tag <p>, or the heading tag <h1>, or an anchor tag <a>. In CSS lingo, the formatting spec is called a declaration block. The declaration block is contained inside curly braces {}. Within those curly braces are specific declarations that define fonts, styles, colors, sizes, and all the other properties that can be defined in CSS. (Flash works with only some of these properties.) The declarations have two parts: a prop- erty and a value. So in CSS, if that property is font-size, then the value is a number representing point size. A CSS definition to format an <h1> heading tag might look like this: h1 { font-family: Arial; font-size:18; font-weight: bold; color: red; } The first line has the selector for h1 headings, usually the biggest, boldest heading on a web page. The next four lines show pairs of properties and values. On the left side of the colon is the property, which is hyphenated if it’s made up of more than one word. On the right side is the value assigned to that property. In Flash, you can recreate the function of a CSS style sheet using the StyleSheet object. It gives you a way to create selectors and then assign values to the properties Flash recognizes. You can’t use style sheets with TLF text, so here’s Flash’s version of the specification shown above using a Classic TextField. 1 var txtBanner:TextField = new TextField(); 2 var styleSheet:StyleSheet = new StyleSheet(); 3 var h1Style:Object = new Object(); 4 var pStyle:Object = new Object(); 5 6 h1Style.fontFamily = "Arial"; 7 h1Style.fontSize = "24"; 8 h1Style.fontWeight = "bold"; 9 h1Style.color = 0x00FF00; 10 11 pStyle.fontFamily = "Arial"; 12 pStyle.fontSize = "12"; 13 pStyle.fontWeight = "normal"; 14 15 styleSheet.setStyle("h1", h1Style); 16 styleSheet.setStyle("p", pStyle); 17 txtBanner.styleSheet = styleSheet; 18 576 F CS: T M M Formatting with HTML and CSS 19 txtBanner.x = 60; 20 txtBanner.y = 120; 21 txtBanner.width = 200; 22 txtBanner.height = 120; 23 txtBanner.autoSize = TextFieldAutoSize.LEFT; 24 txtBanner.background = true; 25 txtBanner.backgroundColor = 0xCDFFFF; 26 txtBanner.border = true; 27 28 txtBanner.htmlText = '<h1>Home of the legendary Stutz Bearcat</h1> <p>What can we do to put you into a Bearcat today?</p>'; 29 addChild(txtBanner); Here’s a line-by-line rundown on the ActionScript. As in the other examples, line 1 creates the TextField object called txtBanner. The next three lines also create objects. Line 2 creates an instance of the StyleSheet class, and lines 3 and 4 create instances of the more generic Object class. You use these objects to hold the CSS declarations. That’s exactly what’s going on in lines 6 through 13. Values are being assigned to the h1Style object, and then the pStyle object. Note that the property names have been changed slightly. That’s because Action- Script jumps into action when it sees a minus sign (–). Instead, these properties eliminate the hyphen and use an uppercase letter for the word following the hyphen. So where the CSS property is named font-family, the ActionScript property is named fontFamily. Lines 15 and 16 use styleSheet’s setStyle() method. The first parameter in the parentheses defines the selector: h1, the heading style, in line 15 and p, the paragraph style, in line 16. The second parameter in each case is the object that was created to hold the declarations. These are ActionScript’s substitute for a declaration block with those paired sets of properties and values. The styleSheet Object now has formatting instructions for two tags that it’s likely to encounter in an HTML document. Line 17 assigns the styleSheet object to txtBan- ner’s styleSheet property. Lines 19 through 26 are the ActionScript code that formats the text field. There’s no CSS here; it’s just straight ActionScript. Line 28 gets back into the CSS business. When you format with CSS, you pass the string to the text field using the htmlText property. The string itself is formatted like HTML, but in- stead of embedding formatting specs, it uses style tags. This little snippet uses two tags, first the <h1> tag for the heading, and then the <p> tag for its rather skimpy paragraph. With CSS, you need to assign the StyleSheet property before you put text in the text field. The last line adds the txtBanner to the Display List for the world to see. Figure 17-7 shows how the CSS-formatted text looks. Note: Flash is very fussy about its style sheets. If it’s unable to read or use any of the styles, it tends to ignore the entire style sheet. The result is that no formatting is applied. 577 C : C, U,  A T Formatting with HTML and CSS Figure 17-7: This text is formatted with CSS. Styles are applied to the paragraph <p> tag and to the heading 1 <h1> tag. You can create CSS styles within your Action- Script code, or you can load an external CSS file. <p> tag <h1> tag There are quite a few things missing from Flash’s version of CSS. First of all, you can assign only one StyleSheet at a time to a text field’s styleSheet property. One of the handy things about CSS is the way you use multiple style sheets for the formatting chores. Another feature missing from Flash’s HTML capabilities is tables, causing moans among web-savvy designers. Web designers like to use tables to format and organize text and pictures. Formatting Text with an External CSS File One of the great features of CSS for designing web pages is that you can use a single external file (called a CSS style sheet) to format many web pages. Want to change the color of a heading? Simply change the definition in the style sheet, and that changes the look of all the web pages. You can use external CSS style sheets with Flash proj- ects, too—just keep in mind the limitations of HTML and CSS in Flash mentioned in the previous section. Note: There are two files for this project, 17-7_External_CSS.fla and 17-8flashText.css. You can find both at www.missingmanuals.com/cds. Both files need to be in the same folder to text the code. To start this exercise, you need a file that defines CSS styles. You can download 17-8flashText.css from the Missing CD site or create your own using a text editor. It’s short and sweet: p { font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px; font-weight: normal; } h1 { font-family: Arial; font-size: 24px; font-weight: bold; color: #00FF00; } This external CSS file defines the same CSS styles that were used in the previous example—the paragraph <p> tag and the heading 1 <h1> tag. Most CSS style sheets are more complicated than this, but as an example, this works just fine. 578 F CS: T M M Formatting with HTML and CSS The ActionScript code that uses this external file needs to do a few things: • Load the external CSS file. • Read (parse) and store the CSS style instructions. • Apply the CSS styles to a text field rendered as HTML. • Display the text field. • Assign text with HTML tags to the htmlText property of the text field. Here are the steps to load an external CSS style sheet and use the styles with code created in ActionScript: 1. Create an instance of the URLLoader class. var loader:URLLoader = new URLLoader(); The URLLoader class is used to load external files that reside on a computer or on the Internet. 2. Register an event listener that triggers when the CSS file has completed loading. loader.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, loadCSSListener); The URLLoader class triggers an event when a file has loaded. When that event triggers, the function loadCSSListener() will run. 3. Create an instance of the URLRequest class to identify the CSS file to be loaded. var request:URLRequest = new URLRequest("17-8flashText.css"); The URLRequest class is used to identify files by filename and if needed a path. In this case, just the filename is used because 17-8flashText.css is to be stored in the same folder as the Flash project. 4. Use the load() method to load the CSS file. Use “request” as the parameter for the load method. loader.load(request); Adding an extra blank line here sets the function for the event listener off from the rest of the code. 5. Create the function that runs when the loader event is complete. function loadCSSListener(evt:Event):void { The rest of the statements in this exercise are part of this function, which ends with the closing curly bracket. 6. Create an instance of the StyleSheet class. var cssFlashStyles:StyleSheet = new StyleSheet(); The StyleSheet class holds CSS style definitions. 7. Read the data in the external CSS file (flash_text.css) and store the data in the style sheet cssFlashStyles. cssFlashStyles.parseCSS(URLLoader(evt.target).data); 579 C : C, U,  A T Formatting with HTML and CSS The process of reading and processing the CSS definitions is called parsing. The method parseCSS is part of the StyleSheet class. 8. Create an instance of the TextField class with the variable name “txtBanner.” var txtBanner:TextField = new TextField(); The text field txtBanner displays text stored in one of two properties—the text property or the htmlText property. 9. Position and size the txtBanner, and then format the background and border. txtBanner.x = 60; txtBanner.y = 120; txtBanner.width = 200; txtBanner.height = 120; txtBanner.autoSize = TextFieldAutoSize.LEFT; txtBanner.background = true; txtBanner.backgroundColor = 0xCDFFFF; txtBanner.border = true; These statements aren’t related to CSS, and their formatting applies to the entire text field. 10. Add txtBanner to the Display List. addChild(txtBanner); Adding txtBanner to the Display List makes it visible on the stage. 11. Assign the cssFlashStyles to the styleSheet property of txtBanner. txtBanner.styleSheet = cssFlashStyles; It may seem a little backward, but the style sheet needs to be applied before the text is assigned to txtBanner. 12. Assign a string of text to txtBanner’s htmlText property. txtBanner.htmlText = '<h1>Home of the legendary Stutz Bearcat</h1> <p> What can we do to put you into a Bearcat today?</p>'; } The text assigned to the htmlText property of txtBanner is a string literal. The HTML tags <p> and <h1> are embedded within the string. 13. Save your Flash file 17-7_External_CSS.fla in the same folder as the CSS file 17-8flashText.css. If you don’t store the two files in the same folder, then you need to provide com- plete path information in the URLRequest, step 3. When you test the movie, Control➝Test Movie, you see text formatted as shown in Figure 17-5. The style definitions are identical in this example and the previous example, where CSS styles were written into the ActionScript code, so the results look the same. 580 F CS: T M M Choosing the Right Text Formatting System In general, using external CSS style sheets gives you more flexibility, because you can change the appearance of text inside of your Flash project by simply editing the style sheet. As long as the name and location of the external CSS file stay the same, you don’t even need to fire up Flash or ActionScript or republish your .swf files. How cool is that? Choosing the Right Text Formatting System So far this chapter has described four different ways to format text in Flash ani- mations. How do you choose the right technique for your project? Here are some general guidelines about when to use Flash’s Properties panel, ActionScript’s Text- Format object, HTML, or CSS to format text in your Flash projects: • Use the Properties panel for its ease of use and when you make all your format- ting decisions as you design the animation. • Use ActionScript’s TextFormat object when you need to make changes to your text while the animation is running. • Use ActionScript’s TextFormat object when you want to work quickly and your project creates TextField objects on the fly. • Use HTML if you have lots of text already formatted in HTML or your work- group requires it. • Use HTML or CSS when you want to embed hyperlinks in dynamic text. • Use CSS if you’re working on a large web-based project that already has estab- lished CSS type specs. • Use CSS if you’re working with lots of text and there are timesaving benefits to be gained by separating formatting from content. Note: When you use HTML and CSS in Flash, you can use only a few of the most common tags and properties. It’s not surprising that these are the tags and properties that are matched by TextFormat object. If you’re choosing HTML or CSS for a specific feature, make sure that you can use that feature in Flash and ActionScript. You can find a complete list in the ActionScript 3.0 Reference for the Adobe Flash Platform in Flash’s help system. Look under flash.text, and then choose the TextField class. Then choose htmlText property, and you see a table that lists the tags Flash supports. For CSS, look under flash.text for the StyleSheet class. In its help pages, you see a table listing the CSS properties supported in Flash and ActionScript. [...]... 8  mcCanvas.addChild(tfPoem); 9 10  mcCanvas.graphics.beginFill(0x99FFFF); 11  mcCanvas.graphics.drawRect(100,100,200,150); 12  13  addChild(mcCanvas); 14  15  var txtRemoveRectangle = new TextField(); 16  txtRemoveRectangle.text = "Click here to remove the rectangle"; 17  txtRemoveRectangle.x = 110; 18  txtRemoveRectangle.y = 250; 19 txtRemoveRectangle.autoSize = TextFieldAutoSize.LEFT; 600 Flash CS5: The Missing... in the movie clip (You haven’t positioned the movie clip, so Flash automatically positions it at 0, 0.) 7 Add the movie clip to the Display List addChild(mcShapes); This code adds the movie clip to the Display List, making it visible 596 Flash CS5: The Missing Manual Making Drawings Move 8 Start the timer tmrMover.start(); The timer starts 9 Register a TimerEvent listener tmrMover.addEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER,timerMoverListener);... 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 var tfPoem:TextField = new TextField(); var mcCanvas:MovieClip = new MovieClip(); tfPoem.text = "Twas brillig, and the slithy toves"; tfPoem.x = 110; tfPoem.y = 110; tfPoem.autoSize=TextFieldAutoSize.LEFT; mcCanvas.addChild(tfPoem); Chapter 18: Drawing with ActionScript 599 Removing Lines and Shapes 10  11  12  13  14  mcCanvas.graphics.beginFill(0x99FFFF); mcCanvas.graphics.drawRect(100,100,200,150);... up back at the beginning: 200, 50 The final line runs the endFill() method Note: Flash fills shapes even if they aren’t entirely enclosed So, even if line 12 (the line that closes the shape) was missing in the example above, Flash would still apply a fill to the shape that’s defined by the rest of the lines 594 Flash CS5: The Missing Manual Making Drawings Move Code Line 5 moveTo (200, 50); Code Line... Follow these steps to perform this feat of animation in code Note: You can find a copy of this code in the Flash file 18-6_Animate_Shape.fla on the Missing CD page at www.missingmanuals.com/cds 1 Select File➝New and choose ActionScript 3.0 A new, empty Flash document appears 2 Press F9 (Option-F9) The Actions panel opens, where you can enter ActionScript code 3 Type this line into the Actions panel... List, nothing actually appears in the Flash Player 8 Test the animation You see a Flash Player stage with a big fat green line running diagonally across the stage, as shown in Figure 18-3 Figure 18-3:  The ActionScript code starting on page 586 draws a 16-pixel-wide green line from the point 20, 50 to the point 500, 380 moveTo (20,50) lineTo (500,380) 588 Flash CS5: The Missing Manual Drawing Curves... 7  shpCircle.graphics.endFill(); 8  9  shpRectangle.graphics.beginFill(0x0 099 00,1); 10  shpRectangle.graphics.drawRect(200,100,150,100); 11  shpRectangle.graphics.endFill(); 12  13  shpTriangle.graphics.moveTo(200,150); 14  shpTriangle.graphics.beginFill(0x880000); 15  shpTriangle.graphics.lineTo(300,250); 16  shpTriangle.graphics.lineTo(100,250); 17  shpTriangle.graphics.lineTo(200,150); 18  shpTriangle.graphics.endFill(); 19 20 ... that are in ptControl.x and ptControl.y Line 17 displays the tfControl text field when it’s added to the Display List using the addChild() method Line 19 defines a lineStyle() The moveTo() method on line 20 ­ ositions the virtual pen at the p 590 Flash CS5: The Missing Manual Drawing Built-in Shapes first ­ nchor point for the line Then the curveTo() method is used The first anchor a point was already... 18-2_Draw_Line.fla in the Missing CD (www.missingmanuals.com/cds) With those generalizations in mind, here are the specific steps to draw a line on the Flash stage: 1 Select File➝New and choose ActionScript 3.0 A new, empty Flash document appears 2 Press F9 (Option-F9 on a Mac) The Actions window opens, where you can enter ActionScript code 3 In the Actions panel, create an instance of the Sprite class by typing... 36  trace(); 37  trace("The location of ptBall is:",ptBall); 38  trace("The location of ptGround is:",ptGround); 39 if (ptBall.equals(ptGround)) 40  { 41  bounce(); 42  } 43  44  function bounce():void 45  { 46  trace("I'm bouncing"); 47  } Actions toolbox Open/close sidebar 584 Flash CS5: The Missing Manual Code panel Figure 18-1:  The appearance of the Actions panel changes depending on the way . use that feature in Flash and ActionScript. You can find a complete list in the ActionScript 3.0 Reference for the Adobe Flash Platform in Flash s help system. Look under flash. text, and then. specific steps to draw a line on the Flash stage: 1. Select File➝New and choose ActionScript 3.0. A new, empty Flash document appears. 2. Press F9 (Option-F9 on a Mac). The Actions window opens,. and keywords and Flash only works with some of them. A com- plete list of HTML tags that work with Flash is included in the help document ActionScript 3.0 Reference for the Adobe Flash Platform.