Flash CS4 All-in-One For Dummies®

Chapter 1. Testing and Debugging a Flash Project

In This Chapter

• Testing a movie

• Previewing a movie

• Debugging a movie

After you slave and toil to create a compelling Flash movie, you have to make sure that it works as expected. Otherwise, you'll end up with copious amounts of egg on your face. And, if you created the Flash project for a client, after the client wipes the egg off his face, you'll get a nasty phone call — hopefully, not from that person's lawyer. So, no matter how large or small your project, you need to test and retest your project to make sure that it performs as planned.

Testing a Movie

When you're creating a Flash project, you should test the project after you make a major change. When you test often, you can detect a mistake or an inconsistency right after you create a new animation or create a new ActionScript rather than after you do a couple of hundred other things to the document and have no idea how to track down the rotten smell in the state of Denmark.

You can perform quite a few tests in Flash authoring mode. This option is handy when you don't want to wait for Flash to publish the document as an SWF file and play it in another window. You can test a movie in authoring mode by choosing one of these methods:

• Drag the playhead to scrub the Timeline. This option comes in handy when you want to check a few frames of animation or preview the manner in which a sound ...