Creating Buttons

There are three types of symbols in Flash: graphics, buttons, and movie clips. Both buttons and movie clips can have scripts attached to them. Graphics, on the other hand, cannot. Because the ActionScript programmer needs to create and use a lot of buttons and movie clips, let’s look at each, starting with buttons, to see how they are made.

The Button Timeline

You can create a button by either choosing Insert, New Symbol, or selecting a set of items on the Stage and choosing Insert, Convert to Symbol. When you do this, make sure you set the symbol type to “Button” in the dialog box. You can also open the Library window and use the pop-up menu at the top and choose New Symbol.