Action Scripting Basics: Inserting a Simple Stop

By

Updated on August 4, 2019

Adobe Systems Incorporated

The stop command is most likely the most basic of all action script commands, and the most essential. A stop is basically an instruction in the ActionScript program language that tells your Flash movie to pause on a particular frame, rather than continuing to the end of the animation or cycling endlessly.

The Purpose of a Stop Command

Stop commands are particularly useful if you're playing an animation before pausing to wait for a user response; you would insert a stop command at the end of the animation, once the options for the user are displayed. This prevents the animation from skipping past the options without giving the user a chance to choose one.

Accessing ActionScripts

While ActionScripting is a programming language, Flash's library allows you to "write" in the language without actually typing the code yourself. To insert a stop at any point in your animation, simply follow these steps:

Create a new layer. Label it Actions, and insert a keyframe on the frame where you want your Flash movie to stop.
Right-click on the keyframe and select Actions. The Simple version of the ActionScript library and interface will appear, with a window that lets you view any actions currently applied to the frame as well as an expanding list of script categories.
Click on the Actions category to expand it, and then the Movie Controls subcategory to show the list of available commands.
To add a stop command, either double-click on the listing for stop or else click and drag it into the window that displays the ActionScripting for that frame. You can also click the "+" button above the window to add a new script item.

And that's it. You've added a stop command that will tell your movie to pause on that particular frame, and worked with ActionScripting for the first time.

Was this page helpful?

Thanks for letting us know!

Tell us why!