Workspace

The workspace

Phoenix keeps the stage in the middle and everything that acts on it around the edges. This page names each area and the panels you can open.

The Phoenix window with numbered markers on the menu bar, Tools panel, edit bar, stage, timeline header, layers list, frame grid and panel dock — The default layout. The numbers match the list below.

Menu bar: File, Edit, Insert, Modify, View, Control, Window and Help.
Tools panel: drawing and editing tools, the stroke and fill colors, and the Object Drawing switch.
Edit bar: where you are in the document (the scene, and any symbol you have opened), with a Back button and the Edit Symbols list, then the stage controls: Center Stage, Rotation, whether content outside the stage is shown, dimmed or clipped, and the zoom box with its magnification menu. When more than one document is open, their tabs sit above it; right-click a tab to close it or others, copy its path, or move it to a window of its own (see Several documents).
Stage: the visible area of your animation, on a gray pasteboard where you can park artwork off screen.
Timeline header: the current frame, frame rate and time, the playback controls, onion skinning and looping.
Layers: the layer stack, with visibility, lock and outline controls.
Frame grid: the frames of every layer over time.
Panel dock: Properties, Library, Color and Swatches as tabs, with room for more panels.

The Tools panel

The Tools panel starts as a column on the left. Related tools share a slot: a small corner mark on a button means there is more than one tool in it. Press and hold the button to see the others, and the one you pick takes over the slot. Every tool's shortcut key works even while its tool is hidden in a slot.

The tools flow to fill the panel. Drag its edge to make it wider and they arrange themselves in as many columns as fit; dock it along the top or bottom of the window and they run in rows instead. Drag the row of grip dots at its end to move the panel, or double-click the grip to float it or dock it again.

To rearrange the tools, choose Window › Edit Toolbar..., or right-click the Tools panel and choose Edit Toolbar.... Drag a tool into a slot to group it there, between slots to give it a slot of its own, or under Hidden to take it off the panel; a hidden tool still works by its key. The first tool in a slot is the one shown. Add Line adds a divider between sections, and Reset puts back Phoenix's own layout.

The Tools panel with the shape slot's flyout open, listing Rectangle, Oval, Rectangle Primitive, Oval Primitive and PolyStar

Below the tools are:

Black and white, which resets to a black stroke and white fill, and Swap colors, which exchanges the stroke and fill colors: the two small buttons side by side.
The stroke and fill color swatches. The stroke is drawn as an outline in its color, the fill as a solid square. Click one to choose a color, including its transparency.
Object Drawing (J), which decides whether new shapes merge with what is under them. See Merge and object drawing.

Hold Ctrl with any tool to use the Selection tool for a moment. See Drawing tools for every tool and its options.

The Properties panel

The Properties panel shows settings for whatever you are working on. It has four tabs, and Phoenix switches between them for you:

Tool: Options for the current tool, plus the fill and stroke it will draw with. Shown when you pick a tool.
Object: Position, size, color and effects of the selection. Shown when you select something on the stage.
Frame: The label, tween, ease and sound of the frame under the playhead. Shown when you click in the frame grid.
Doc: Stage size, frame rate and stage color. Shown when nothing is selected with the Selection tool.

Object tab for a graphic symbol instance, showing Instance, Position and Size, Color Effect, Display and Looping sections — Object tab for a symbol instance

Tool tab for the Brush, with size, pressure, velocity, taper, smoothing and brush mode options — Tool tab for the Brush

Hot text

Every number you can change in Phoenix, in the panels and in dialogs alike, is hot text: an underlined value you drag across to scrub, or click to type into.

Do this	To
Drag left or right	Scrub the value
`Shift` while dragging	Change it ten times faster
`Ctrl` while dragging	Change it in tenths, for fine adjustment
Click, type, `Enter`	Enter an exact value. In a dialog, `Enter` also presses its main button, such as OK
`F2`	Start typing into the value you have tabbed or clicked to
`Esc` while typing	Cancel and keep the old value
`Tab`	Move to the next value, ready to type
`↑` `↓`, or the mouse wheel	Step the value up or down (`Page Up` and `Page Down` step ten times as far). The wheel only changes a value you have clicked or tabbed into, so scrolling a panel never changes one by accident

Every change made in the Properties panel is a single step you can undo.

Other panels

Every panel opens from the Window menu, which ticks the ones that are open. Choosing an open panel that is in view closes it; choosing one that is closed, or hidden behind another tab, brings it to the front. The keys work with the menu closed too.

The Window menu: Workspaces, the panels with their keys, Motion Presets, Document Brushes, Render Queue, Hide Panels, Theme and Edit Toolbar

Panel	Key	Use it to
Timeline	`Ctrl`+`Alt`+`T`	Work with layers and frames
Tools	`Ctrl`+`F2`	Pick drawing and selection tools
Properties	`Ctrl`+`F3`	Change the selection, the tool, the frame or the document
Library	`Ctrl`+`L`	Browse and organize symbols, bitmaps and sounds
Outliner	`Ctrl`+`Alt`+`O`	See the document as a tree
Color	`Ctrl`+`Shift`+`F9`	Choose solid, gradient and bitmap fills
Swatches	`Ctrl`+`F9`	Pick from the document's saved colors
Align	`Ctrl`+`K`	Line up, distribute, match sizes and space objects
Transform	`Ctrl`+`T`	Scale, rotate and skew by exact amounts
Info	`Ctrl`+`I`	Read the size, position, cursor position and color under the cursor
Frame Picker	—	Choose which frame a graphic symbol shows, from thumbnails
Motion Editor	—	Edit a motion tween's property curves
Layer Depth	—	Set how far each layer sits from the multiplane camera
X-Sheet	—	Type each layer's exposures frame by frame, by drawing number
History	`Ctrl`+`F10`	See every step you can undo, and go back or forward to one
Review Notes	—	Read and add notes on frames that never export
Controllers	—	Drive properties on several layers with one slider
Scene	`Shift`+`F2`	Switch, add, duplicate, delete, rename and reorder scenes
Movie Explorer	`Alt`+`F3`	Browse the whole document as a tree
Function Curves	—	Edit any property of the current layer as a curve over time
Palettes	—	Recolor everything linked to a palette's named colors

The Window menu also opens Motion Presets, Document Brushes and the Render Queue, and has Workspaces, Hide Panels, Theme and Edit Toolbar..., described below.

The View menu, with the light table, camera view, scene and onion skin options, rulers, guides, zoom and snapping — The View menu controls what the stage shows.

Arranging panels

Every panel, including the timeline, the Tools panel and the outliner, is a docked window. Drag a panel by its title bar to move it to any edge of the window or onto another panel to make a tab group, or click the float button in its title bar to give it a window of its own. Phoenix remembers the layout between sessions, and a floating panel left on a screen that is no longer connected comes back onto the main one.

A document moved to a window of its own gets its own stage, timeline and panels, laid out as in the first window. Arranging the panels there changes that window only: the layout Phoenix remembers, and the window's place on the screen, are the first window's.

Press F4 (Window › Hide Panels) to hide every open panel and see the stage alone. Press it again to bring them back.

To give the stage more room but keep the panels at hand, choose Window › Collapse Right Panels to Icons (or Left). The panels docked on that side fold into a narrow strip of their names. Click a name to open that panel beside the strip, and click it again to close it. Expand at the bottom of the strip, or the same menu item, puts the panels back where they were docked. A layout or workspace saved while panels are collapsed keeps them docked.

Workspaces

A workspace is a saved arrangement of the panels, the Tools panel's layout and the width of the layers list. Switch between them under Window › Workspaces. Phoenix comes with four:

Essentials: Phoenix's own layout: the tools on the left, the timeline below the stage, and Properties, Library, Color and Swatches as tabs on the right.
Animator: A tall timeline with the Motion Editor and Layer Depth as tabs beside it, the Frame Picker among the panels, and the tools in two columns.
Designer: Color, Swatches, Align, Transform and Info grouped under Properties, a short timeline, and the tools in two columns.
Classic: The timeline above the stage, and the tools down the right beside Properties and the Library.

The rest of the Workspaces menu manages them:

New Workspace...: Saves the current layout under a new name.
Save Workspace: Saves the current layout over the workspace in use.
Reset: Puts the workspace in use back the way it was last saved.
Rename Workspace, Delete Workspace: Rename or delete one of your own workspaces. The built-in ones stay.
Import Workspace..., Export Workspace...: Pass a workspace to another machine as a .phxworkspace file. An imported workspace never replaces one you have; it gets a number after its name instead.

Themes

Window › Theme sets the colors of Phoenix's window. Follow System (the default) is dark or light as your system is; Dark and Light stay as they are; Turquoise is a built-in example of a theme of its own. Themes you save are listed after them.

Choose Window › Theme › Edit Theme... to make your own. Changes show on the window as you make them.

Edit Theme dialog with Start from, Mode, Font size and UI scale above a list of color roles for the window and the timeline

Start from: The theme to begin with.
Mode: Dark or Light: how the window's controls are drawn. Colors you leave alone take the mode's own.
Font size: The size of the text in the window, or System for your system's size.
UI scale: The size of everything in Phoenix's window, from 75% to 250%. It takes effect the next time Phoenix starts.
Colors: Every color the window uses, grouped as Window, Timeline, Stage and Graphs: panels, text, hot text, color swatch borders, frame cells and tween spans, the playhead, the pasteboard, rulers, onion skin colors, transform handles and graph backgrounds. Double-click a color to change it; right-click it to put back the mode's own. Colors the theme sets itself are shown in italics.

Save As... names the theme and uses it. Import... and Export... read and write .phxtheme files, and Delete removes one of your themes. Close without saving puts back the theme you had.

History and Repeat

Window › History (Ctrl+F10) lists every step you can undo, from Opened at the top to your latest change. Click a step to undo or redo back to it. Steps you have undone are grayed until you redo them or make a new change. The Undo and Redo commands in the Edit menu also name the step they undo or redo.

Edit › Repeat (Ctrl+Shift+Y) runs the last command you chose from the Insert or Modify menu, or from Edit › Timeline, again on what is selected now. The menu names the command it will repeat.

Find and Replace

Choose Edit › Find and Replace (Ctrl+F) to search the whole document, every scene and every symbol, for Text (with Match case and Whole word), a Font, a Color (in fills, strokes, gradients and text), a Symbol's instances, a Sound on the keyframes that play it, or a Bitmap in its instances and bitmap fills. Find All lists where each is; click one to go there. Replace All changes them all as one step you can undo. Edit › Find Next (F3) goes to the next place it is found, with the dialog closed.

Movie Explorer

Window › Movie Explorer (Alt+F3) shows the whole document as a tree: each scene's layers, their keyframes with labels, scripts and sounds, and what is on them, with symbol instances by symbol and instance name and text by what it says. Symbol Definitions lists every symbol's own contents the same way. The buttons above choose what is listed: Text, Symbols, Scripts, Media (bitmaps and sounds) and Frames (layers and labeled frames with nothing else shown). Type in the search box to narrow it to names and text that match. Click an entry to go to it on the stage. The ☰ menu has Show in Library, Expand All, Collapse All and Copy All Text to Clipboard.

The outliner

Open the outliner with Window › Outliner (Ctrl+Alt+O). It shows the whole document as a tree: scenes, layers, frames, and the elements on them, down to individual paths and edges in a shape. Select something in the outliner and it is selected on the stage too. It is a quick way to find a small or hidden element in a crowded scene.

The status bar

The bar along the bottom of the window shows how many objects are selected, confirms saves and exports, and shows the progress of an update download.

Context menus

Right-click almost anywhere for the commands that apply there:

On the stage: cut, copy and paste; arrange; transform; distribute to layers; convert to symbol; edit, edit in place or swap a symbol; break apart; group and ungroup.
On a layer: insert and delete layers and folders; cut, copy, paste and duplicate layers; guide and mask types; the parent layer; show all, hide others and lock others; and layer properties.
On frames: tweens, frames and keyframes, cut, copy and paste frames, paste and overwrite, reverse frames, convert to frame-by-frame, and copy and paste motion.
In the Library: rename, duplicate, delete, copy and paste items, new symbols, folders and fonts, properties, and selecting unused items.
On the Tools panel: Edit Toolbar.