Macromedia Flash MX 2004 Killer Tips

It's common practice to place comments throughout your ActionScript to keep track of changes or make notes about the code, but who ever heard of putting a comment on a frame in the Timeline? Trust me, they're useful. For example, let's say you have a simple stop action on your Timeline, but you keep forgetting what actions are on that frame because all you see is a little "a" above the keyframe. Instead of continually selecting the frame to see what's there, you can add a comment to remind yourself.

Select any keyframe, look to the Property inspector, and type a comment ("stop" in this case) into the Frame Label field. Now change the label type to Comment. Flash will ignore the comment, but you'll be easily reminded of what kind of code you put there. You can use these comments for a number of reasons, so long as you use them. They help others understand what's going on in your Timeline, and doing this forces them to take you out for dinner after work. I promise.

You can accomplish the same effect a bit quicker by just creating a frame label and putting "//" in front of the name you give it.