I have received several requests from my readers for some easy to create text effects. One of the easiest ways to create text effects is to use the built-in Flash^R Timeline Effects and apply them to text. Although this article is about text, these effects can be applied to other things on the stage such as shapes, graphics, grouped objects, bitmaps and more. Flash does all the work and you have control over the properties of the effects via the dialog box. As you build your effect, you can use the update preview to test the effect before applying it to the object.

These effects are called Timeline Effects because they change objects over several frames of your Flash movie. You can tell this because Flash adds the frames to the Timeline and renames the layer for you. How the object changes is determined by the type of effect you choose to apply. Let’s take a look at the four basic Timeline Effects.

Explode Timeline Effect
As the name suggests, this effect will break up the object into several pieces and these pieces will move outward from where the original object once was on the stage. In the dialog box, you can control the duration or number of frames, the direction and arc that the pieces will travel and the rotation, alpha and size of the pieces.

Drop Shadow
Think of all the ways you can use this 3D effect. Flash creates the drop shadow by duplicating the object and placing the duplicate behind and offset from the original. Of course, it also needs to reduce the opacity of the duplicate so that it appears to be a shadow. You have control over the opacity, the color of the shadow and the amount of offset.

Blur
Making something appear to fade away has so many uses. Flash creates this effect by changing the opacity of the object over time. With this effect, you can control the duration, resolution, scale, direction and the horizontal and vertical blur.

Expand
The expand effect is similar to the Explode effect but instead of the letters breaking apart, the letters grow in size, which gives the illusion that the letters are getting larger and closer. You can control the number of frames, the direction of the movement, the center point from which the letters move away from and the offset and size of the letters. You have the option to make the letters expand outward, squeeze inward or both.

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