Recipe 1.5. Applying Line Styles

Problem

You want to apply a dashed, dotted, stippled, ragged, or hatched effect to a line.

Solution

Specify the appropriate style in the Property inspector.

Discussion

You can add a stroke effect to a shape using one of Flash's seven built-in stroke styles: Hairline, Normal, Dashed, Dotted, Ragged, Stippled, and Hatched. You can apply these styles to an existing line by selecting the line with the Selection tool and choosing the line style from the Property inspector. Alternatively, you can select any tool capable of creating strokes (Line, Pen, Oval, Rectangle, Pencil, and Ink Bottle) and choose a line style from the Property inspector before you create the stroke.

If the built-in line styles are not exactly what you want, you can customize one of the line styles to better suit your needs. For example, if you need smaller dashes in a dashed line, you can customize the dashed line style. To customize a style, click the Custom button in the Property inspector while a stroke is selected or a tool capable of creating a stroke is active. The Stroke Style dialog box opens.

You can set the attributes of each stroke style to customize its appearance. For example, for the Dashed stroke, you can specify the spacing and pixel width of the dashes. The Hatched style has six settingsThickness, Space, Jiggle, Rotate, Curve, and Lengthwhose effects are evident in the Stroke Style dialog box's convenient preview window.

You can customize all the line styles, except the Hairline, which is the Solid style with a thickness of one screen pixel.

See Also

Recipe 1.1, Recipe 1.10, Recipe 1.17