Ideally, your code will be completely external to your Flash file (.FLA). However, we’ll get to that later. For this tutorial, we will put it in the next best place: on the main timeline, on the top layer, in the first frame.

Since you’ve just created a new project, you only have one layer to begin with. That’s going to be your ActionScript layer. Double click on its name (”Layer 1”) and change it to “actions”. Now lock it by clicking on the dot under the Lock icon. This prevents you from accidentally using this layer for something other than ActionScript, which of course would not be a Best Practice.

Now you have a layer with one frame that is ready for action, which is exactly what we will now give it. Click on that one frame to select it. Bring up the Actions panel (Window > Actions in the menu, Option-F9 on the Mac or just F9 on the PC). This panel now represents all the code currently in the selected frame, which in this case is none.

Best Practices are satisfied so far: in the next chapter, let’s try some coding.