I am one clumsy sucker with a mouse - especially with my laptop's touchpad. There was a time when I could draw detailed, proportional art on-screen without use of a graphics tablet; now I'm lucky if I can hit the link I was trying to open on the first shot. I blame old age and carpal tunnel. (Or I'm just an uncoordinated mess; can you use "old age" as an excuse when you're only 29?) Because of this, I often goof up when tweaking gradients in Flash. It's not uncommon for me to accidentally add five or six unwanted color swatches to a gradient's palette, just from trying to adjust the position of existing swatches. Thankfully I don't have to drive myself batty by manually dragging them off the color bar area until they disappear; just a little keyboard shortcut fixes the problem. Well...assuming I can hit that tiny square on the first try.

Many don't even know what gradient overflow is - let alone that you can adjust its behavior in Flash. Well, now you know. And now you can. If you're completely lost, check out this tip on how to adjust gradient overflow so that gradients no longer bleed into an extension of the last color in the gradient palette when they reach the end before reaching the farthest edge of the fill area. Instead you can set the gradient to repeat to the edge of the fill area, with two different options for how it repeats.

I'm a big believer in the saying "it's the little things that count." What may seem inconsequential to one person is an invaluable time-saver for another. For me, this little feature of Flash radial gradients saves me from having to use the Gradient Transform Tool - which I have a definite hate/hate relationship with. I don't like the thing. It doesn't like me. If I use my radials correctly, I hardly ever have to go near it.

I know, I know, the title was terribly punny - but if that title made you groan, the topic of this post will just make you shake your head. We all know Flash is a useful tool for animation, web design, and application development...and we know even better that for every person out there who uses Flash as an accessory to their craft, there are ten more who use it in ways that make our eyes hurt, make our ears bleed, and make our computers scream in protest. Check out these ten stupid Flash tricks to make sure you're one of the former rather than one of the latter.