1. Home
  2. Computing & Technology
  3. Animation

Flash Tip: Making an Invisible "Hotspot" Button

By Adrien-Luc Sanders, About.com

1 of 6

Setting Up a Scene

In Lesson 9, we covered creating standard buttons with a rollover effect; to expand on that, however, let's take a look at how to make a "hotspot" button--a button that's basically invisible and turns a part of your scene into a clickable "hotspot".

To start with, let's make a simple scene. The image above is what I like to call a "quick and dirty"--something patched together in five minutes for demonstrative purposes. It's a door. No, really, it is. And that little...circle thingy...is a rug. So. Moving on--for this scene we're going to make the doorknob clickable; let's say hypothetically that clicking the doorknob would "open" the door and play a new scene.

But we don't want to make the lines and fills for the doorknob oval itself clickable; it makes editing the doorknob itself more difficult later, and also limits the clickable area. We want to expand the area to the doorknob and a small area around the doorknob so the user doesn't have to try so hard to click right on that one tiny, exact spot.

Explore Animation
About.com Special Features

Stay connected and entertained with reviews on tips on the latest HDTVs, cellphones and more. More >

Easy ways to connect two computers for networking purposes. More >

  1. Home
  2. Computing & Technology
  3. Animation
  4. Flash Animation Tutorials
  5. Flash Program Tools
  6. Flash Tip: Making an Invisible "Hotspot" Button

©2009 About.com, a part of The New York Times Company.

All rights reserved.