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Written by Rawpulse
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Saturday, 08 April 2006 |
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Learn about the corner radius to create rounded edges!
The corner radius is a widely overlooked feature within Flash. It is a setting that determines the roundness of the corners of rectangles and squares. With the correct settings, it's possible to make great looking buttons. Let's take a closer look.
The corner radius setting is not something that you will find on the Properties menu (though perhaps it should be). Instead, it's located on the toolbar. To access the settings box, you have to double click the Rectangle Tool. Obviously clicking once simply selects the Rectangle Tool. This is the faster way to get to it. You can also access it via the Options menu on the toolbar, after you have selected the Rectangle Tool. Once you open it, you will notice a small window appears above the stage, asking you to choose a number for the corner radius:
The default number is 0, which means there is no roundness when you draw a rectangle. As you increase this number, the roundness will increase. The maximum number you can select is 999 points, which will create a fully rounded corner. However, as you pass 50 points, there's not much difference if you go any higher, so the fact that it can reach 999 is fairly pointless.
Once you have chosen your corner radius point, draw the rectangle as normal and you will see the sides are curved. The image beneath displays what the rectangle will look like with various corner radius settings.
The corner radius has great potential, especially for web design. Below is an example of tabbed buttons created using a corner radius setting of 20 points. The bottom is straightened using the selection tool.
If you had a problem with this tutorial, tell us about it on our forum.
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