Undiscoverable features in Flash MX 2004
Throughout a release cycle we always stay in contact with users to get feedback. Very often users request new features from us which are already in the product, but were just undiscoverable. This can be due to missing UI, a bad description or wrong location. One of the examples is a basic ActionScript editor formatting feature, the block indent. Very often you just want to indent a whole block of code like this:
Well, as you can see there is no icon you can click for this, the AutoFormat feature will not do exactly what you want either. You have to know the shortcut which is simply TAB for increasing the indent of a selected block and SHIFT-TAB for decreasing the indent of a block.
What makes this even more confusing that it is the same on Windows and Mac. While this is standard in many Windows applications, the Mac editors I know (CodeWarrior, Eddy) usually use APPLE+'[' and APPLE+']' for this. Another reason this is sometimes lost in the appendix of the documentation.
While being at it, did you ever try to hold SHIFT-CTRL while using the scroll wheel? If your mouse is over the stage you might just have found a new feature. ;-) Obviously this does not help the fact that it should actually be just CTRL and that holding SHIFT does not scroll horizontally like it should.
Well, as you can see there is no icon you can click for this, the AutoFormat feature will not do exactly what you want either. You have to know the shortcut which is simply TAB for increasing the indent of a selected block and SHIFT-TAB for decreasing the indent of a block.
What makes this even more confusing that it is the same on Windows and Mac. While this is standard in many Windows applications, the Mac editors I know (CodeWarrior, Eddy) usually use APPLE+'[' and APPLE+']' for this. Another reason this is sometimes lost in the appendix of the documentation.
While being at it, did you ever try to hold SHIFT-CTRL while using the scroll wheel? If your mouse is over the stage you might just have found a new feature. ;-) Obviously this does not help the fact that it should actually be just CTRL and that holding SHIFT does not scroll horizontally like it should.
posted by Tinic Uro at 1:36 PM
2 Comments:
Hey Tinic,
That Control+shift + mouse wheel, is a cool feature! Never knew there existed something like that!
btw, Let me one more to the list, in actions panel.
If I need to select all code inside a pair of paranthesis, ie between '{' and '}', all I need to do is, press Control+'. pressing this combo repeatedly will result in the selection growing outwards to the next pair of enclosing braces.
This has been very useful for me at times. Dont know if this appears in the documentation anywhere...
Cheers,
Arul Prasad
I accidently found out about the code indenting because it works the same way in BBEdit for mac. I didn't even think about it because I was so used to doing it. I really like that feature and I hope they keep it in the new version of flash.
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