While reading most Flash tutorials, not only here at lashf.com but also anywhere else, you will often come across such instructions as "convert it to a (Movieclip/ Button/Graphic) Symbol". That's why I thought it would be a good idea to write a tutorial on how and, most importantly, why someone should ever convert anything to a Symbol while working in Flash.
How do we do it?
Of course, it's no philosophy to do it. Just draw something, select it, and press F8. A "Convert to Symbol" dialog box will pop up. Type my_symbol (or anything else you like) in Name and choose any of the three options you've got in Type. Although they differ quite a lot between each other, it doesn't really matter which of them you choose because all of them are Symbols.
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What are the advantages?
OK, so you've created a Symbol. Now it's time you had a look at the benefits that you can gain from using them.
a) Symbols can be tweened (see Tweening).
b) Symbols don't get mixed. Thanks to that, you can, for example, keep all of your character's bodyparts on the same Layer!
Below you can see an example of what happens if you don't convert your objects to Symbols. I first drew a light blue rectangle and then I drew a square. As you can see, the rectangle chopped a handsome chunk of the circle!
c) All symbols are automatically saved in the library (Ctrl + L), so that you can always retrieve them.
e) Button and Movieclip Symbol can be controlled via Actionscript (Graphic Symbols can't!).
d) Symbols can easily be swapped, moved, scaled up, scaled down - you name it. Just select the Symbol and press Q to transform it.
OK, I hope this information helped you somehow. Thanks for reading and have a nice day!
Cheers!
