Organizing and structuring your Flash projects (part 2)

Using the Flash project panel

If you are not the only one who is going to work on a project it is well advised that you create a new Flash project before anything else (fig4)

fig4

Projects in Adobe Flash introduce a way for members on a team to work together on a single Flash application or project. A project file remembers each of the files it contains, and lets you incorporate some SourceSafe capabilities into your applications, which helps you keep backups of modified files.

You can group multiple files into a single project file using the Project panel in Adobe Flash Professional 8 (fig5). This helps simplify application building, where managing related files could get complex and confusing. You can define a site for your work, create a Flash Project file (FLP), and then upload everything to the server so that a team can work on the project.

(fig5)

Version control lets you check files in and out of your repository, and check that only one person is working on a file at a certain time. Other benefits include the ability to revert to older versions of the files, so if your FLA file becomes corrupted or spontaneously stops working, you can revert to an older (working) version.

Version control features help to ensure that you use the correct current files when authoring, and that certain files are not overwritten. When multiple authors work on the same project, you can check that only one person has the file checked out and, during that time, another person cannot overwrite the file.

Before you start working on a file just right click on it and select Check Out (Fig6). The file is now readable only for your co-workers and they won't be able to edit it until you Check In (fig7). You will notice that a little paddlock icon appears next to your file when you have checked in (fig7).

fig6 fig7

Organizing assets on layers

Organizing your layers and the assets on layers is very important if you (and especially your co-workers) want to be able to see where is what and what is where.

Naming your layers

When you create a new layer make sure you give it a proper name. Is that layer going to be used for sounds ? actionscript code ? graphics ? frame labels ? To give a name to a layer just double click on it (fig8)

fig8

You will notice on the picture above that the top layer is named actionscript. A lot of Adobe Flash developers generally use the top layer to write their code. You can name it "scripts" or "my scripts" or whatever it doesn't really matter, but it's best to keep it at the top for convention reason.