While you can't use symbols with shape tweens, the mantra for almost every other situation is, "when in doubt, make it a symbol." Symbols are what keep Flash animations so fighting trim. When you create a symbol, the image needs to be drawn only once. And once you create a symbol, you can use it as many times (instances) as you need to, and you can move it or even transform it (resize it, for instance) in each instance without adding to the overall file size of the animation. You can even copy a symbol from one movie into another.
There are two ways to create a symbol: As with shapes, you can create a symbol from scratch, or you can redefine an existing element as a symbol. Symbols may contain other symbols as well. And those symbols may contain other symbols, which contain other symbols, and so on. In fact, symbols can contain almost anything that a Flash movie contains.
Not only are there different ways to create symbols, but there are different kinds of symbols. In the previous tutorial, you learned how to create two kinds of symbols: a Graphic symbol and a Button symbol. A simple Graphic symbol allows you to reuse a static object. A Button symbol can be configured to do things (swap in an image, play an animation, etc.) when you mouse over it.
But there is also a third kind of symbol - the Movie Clip.
Movie Clip symbols are simple, self-contained animations that animate in their own time, regardless of what's happening in the rest of the movie. This is what we need to really fancify our button. So now let's take a look at how it's done.
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