Symbols in flash

Movie Clip

• The movie clip is one of three symbol types in Flash, and just like graphic symbols, they can be easily duplicated and maintained from a single master symbol in the library. Movie clips are unique in that each one contains its own timeline that looks and works just like the main one. This timeline is completely self-contained, so animations in movie clips don’t depend on or rely on the length of an animation contained within the main Timeline. Movie clips can almost be thought of as movies within a movie. Movie clips behave just like other symbols, so several instances of the same movie clip can be dragged to the main stage to easily duplicate animations. If you need to change an animation that appears several times throughout a movie, you need to modify only the original movie clip in the library that contains it.

Button

• Buttons in Animate (formerly Flash Professional) are symbols that contain four frames. Each frame of a button symbol represents a different state for the button: Up, Over, Down, and Hit. These states determine how a button visually behaves when the mouse is rolled over it or when the user clicks the button. This document explains how to create basic and advanced buttons.

Graphic

• Graphic symbols are reusable static images that are used mainly to create animations. Any drawn vector/plain text/imported bitmap (photo), or combinations of these, can be converted into a single controllable object, called a graphic symbol. Graphic Symbols have only one frame in their timeline.

Bibliography

• http://www.dummies.com/software/adobe/flash/what-is-a-flash-cs5-movie-clip/
• https://helpx.adobe.com/animate/kb/create-buttons.html
• http://www.smartwebby.com/Flash/graphic_symbols.asp