Flash 101 - Part 4: Don't Touch Me

Click Me

Of course, a button which does nothing when clicked is a lot like a broken clock - useless. And the guys who created Flash knew this too - which is why they built in a whole bunch of "actions" that you can attach to your button. One of the most popular of these is the "Get URL" action, which directs the browser to open a new URL.

To attach the "Get URL" action - or any other action - to your button, right-click the button on the Stage, and select "Actions" from the pop-up menu. From the window that opens up, double-click the "Get URL" item in the Basic Actions section -- Flash will write some code on the right side of the panel, and display a couple of text fields at the bottom for you to enter the URL and the window name(if any).

Once you've entered a URL, you can see how it works with the button below - it will open a new Web site in a new browser window.

In order to test actions in the Flash authoring environment, you need to make sure that the Control -> Enable Simple Frame Actions menu item is activated.

There are a bunch of other actions available as well, and I'll be exploring them next week. So stay tuned -- this is just getting interesting!

Note: All examples in this article have been tested on Macromedia Flash 5.0. Examples are illustrative only, and are not meant for a production environment. YMMV!

Copyright Melonfire, 2000. All rights reserved.