XXP SWF animation: pasteboard and aligning frames

[Tallis]

OK, hundreds of my semi-capable brain cells are now harnassed in embracing animation, however imprecisely for me, at the moment. I can feel my neurons tossing back a few in happines; I'm getting that "xara can do this?!" feeling... I guess that puts me in the zone now...

So I'm still with egg's couple of xar attachments illustrating SWF website design. flashsiresR crap.xar, etc. I'm trying to use Xara instead of Flash 8.0. OK, that was a joke for those of you crusaders...

Anyway, I was wondering what strategies you guys use to manage the horizontal and vertical location of the animation page in relation to the-- what is it called-- pasteboard space?

i.e., you move items in a particular frame in relation to the pasteboard. Of course, when you play the animation, the items in that frame no longer are at the same x,y as the other frames.

Let's say then want to move it back in direct alignment with the others-- how do you align all the frames again?

since my example is a website, my buttons are on the background, so they dont move. But many of my frames have text boxes which appear in the same space. I inadvertantly yanked some items around some frames, sometimes all the elements in teh frame itself, and after realizing that now that frame is not in sync with the rest as far as x and y coordinates of the objects, how to I get it back? Is there some sort of align frames command?

I guess other than "don't do that", I'm looking for ways or strategies to handle keeping items in frames properly aligned, and how to fix things if things inadvertantly get slid over.

Thanks

[Intbel]

If you make all frames editble and visible you can marquee the objects you want to align and then er ... align 'em.

[WolfMoonHP]

I generally start with Ctrl-L to show my rulers, then drag vertical and horizontal guidelines to help. This is really useful for a lot of things.
---
Will

[Tallis]

"er ... align 'em."

uh.... you mean you can select items from multiple layers ( or frames ) at the same time and use the align tool?

[Intbel]

"er ... align 'em."

uh.... you mean you can select items from multiple layers ( or frames ) at the same time and use the align tool?

Yup. With all frames (or layers) editable and visible you can treat everything as if everything is on one layer.

[Tallis]

If I was single, or if polygamy were allowed, I would marry Xara.

What a catch...

Thanks Intbel. Another epiphany, sponsored by Xara.

[Intbel]

If I was single, or if polygamy were allowed, I would marry Xara.
What a catch...
Thanks Intbel. Another epiphany, sponsored by Xara.

Y'welcome.
An epiphany a day keeps the Adobe away ..

[Tallis]

Pro came out just at the right time woth Photoshop/Ill CS3 apparently now out in beta... Of course, implicit it that statement is the "not that xara competes directly since xara is so much more...."