state defines the button's active area, the area that responds to the mouse click. You'll draw a rectangle to represent the button area for the Hit state, but the area will be invisible in the final movie. Creating a Hit state for the symbol automatically applies it to each instance of the symbol. You don't have to draw a rectangle or any other shape to define the Hit state. If you want the button's active area to match the graphic in the Up, Down, or Over state exactly, press Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS) and drag the dot from one of the other states in the Timeline to the Hit state. 1. Using the Selection tool, double-click the first menu_button instance to edit the symbol in place. Flash opens the menu_button Timeline and dims everything but the button on the Stage. 2. In the menu_button Timeline, select the Hit frame. 3. Choose Insert > Timeline > Blank Keyframe. [View full size image] 4. Select the Rectangle tool. 5. Draw a rectangle that covers the text and the button above it. Select a fill color. Any color is fine, but a fill color must be selected for the area to be included in the Hit state. Because you're editing the symbol, the Hit state is added to all the instances on the Stage. 6. Click Scene 1 to return to the main Stage. 7. Choose Control > Enable Simple Buttons. This command lets you preview button behaviors on the Stage. 8. Hover the mouse over the buttons and click them to see the appearance for each state. Note The appearance changes for each button state because you've added a state to each frame in the menu_button Timeline. However, the buttons are not scripted, so no action results from clicking them. Creating an Invisible Button In Flash, buttons don't have to look like buttons. In fact, anything can behave like a button if you place an invisible button over it. When you roll over or click an invisible button, the appearance on screen changes or some action occurs, but the screen isn't cluttered with buttons when they're not in use. When and how you use invisible buttons is a design decision. In this project, you'll add invisible buttons to the thumbnails for the video clips, so that later you could script the thumbnails to play the videos when they are clicked. 1. Choose Insert > New Symbol. 2. Name the symbol invisible_button. 3. Select Button for the Type, and click OK. 4. In the invisible_button Timeline, select the Hit frame. 5. Choose Insert > Timeline > Blank Keyframe. [View full size image] 6. Use the Rectangle tool to draw a rectangle of any size.