Flash Extensions

Check out the chapter I wrote on JSFL and Flash Extensions in Chris Georgenes’ excellent book How to Cheat in Adobe Flash CS5.

Sync To Timeline

This adds a command which syncs a selected symbol to the timeline, regardless of if they’re isolated on their own layers. Really useful for re-timing nested animation, especially for stuff like lip sync.

NewerAnimClip

This is an extended version of Dave Wolfe’s NewAnimClip which takes care of all the legwork. Just select a section of frames in your timeline, run the command, and that animation will be symbolized in the exact correct place. Basically a fully automated “Pringle”.

Enter Graphic at Current Frame

This adds a command that enters the selected graphic at the currently displayed frame. By default, Flash just opens the Graphic to its first frame, regardless of what’s being shown on the main stage. No more! Assign this to an easy to use hotkey like [ / ] for best use. I plan to make a tool that adds this function to the Selection Tool when I have more time.

SkipAround

This adds three commands: Skip Ahead, Skip Back, and Set Skip. This allows the user to advance and recede the current frame by the interval they set in Set Skip. This is very useful for quickly scrubbing through your animation (and even more useful if you animate on twos). To get the full use, assign Skip Ahead and Skip Back the hotkeys [ Shift ] + [ . ] and [ Shift ] + [ , ] as Flash’s advance one frame and recede one frame are [ . ] and [ , ].

Extend to Longest Layer

Very simple but annoyance-saving command which extends all layers in the timeline to the length of the longest layer. Great if you find yourself pasting audio into a bunch of nested symbols for animation.

Create Masking Layer

This adds the Create Masking Layer command which adds a new layer and creates a black masking layer so you can only see what’s on your stage, not the elements hanging off. Useful for seeing what the viewer will see at runtime and also for not allowing the viewer to see what they shouldn’t by resizing your swf.

Keyframe Jumper

This adds the Next Keyframe and Previous Keyframe commands. They skip to the next or previous keyframe in your currently selected layer. Useful for checking out your breakdowns and quick navigation around the timeline. Flash has a next frame and previous frame functionality built in ( [ Control ] + [ > ] and [ < ]), but these commands take you to the next and previous keyframes (frames with the little black dot in them in the timeline), however many frames apart they might be.. It’s a good idea to set these to [ Alt ] + [ . ] for Next Keyframe and [ Alt ] + [ , ] for Previous Keyframe for the reasons mentioned above in SkipAround.

LabelJumper

This adds the Next Label, Previous Label, and Goto Label commands which allow you to quickly jump to keyframes with specific labels.

Custom Zoom

This adds the Custom Zoom and Zoom Presets 1-4 commands. Custom Zoom opens a dialog that lets you set the zoom values for the Zoom Presets. Hotkey these to [ CTRL ] + [ 5 ] – [ 9 ] to complement Flash’s built in zoom presets of [ CTRL ] + [ 1 ] – [ 4 ].

Easy Palette

Easy Palette is a color management system that gives the user a friendlier and more useful way to manage custom palettes by allowing them to name colors to speed identification (useful for groups that are working on the same project), save and load custom palettes (useful for easily applying color schemes across various documents, or to have specific palettes for each character in your animation), and quickly navigate through saved colors.

Autocolor Full (Permament Beta).

This is the full fledged version of Autocolor Basic. It is much more complex and posseses much more functionality. View the following movies to see what Autocolor Full is all about and how to use it (it works a bit differently than you might think).