Flash oddities (Flash MX - Flash 8)

I want to start a new list in the same vein as Flash Limits. This will cover all the “oddities” of Flash, or more specifically, the behaviors in Flash that are not intuitive. Note: this will not cover Flash bugs. There are [url=“http://www.kirupa.com/forum/showthread.php?t=34107”]other [url=“http://www.kirupa.com/forum/showthread.php?t=192159”]threads for that.

I’ll throw a few out there to start adding more as they come to mind. Feel free to suggest others in posts below. Be sure to specify a Flash version if specific to one in particular (not needed if valid for all versions of Flash MX and above). If you have a link with a deeper explanation of the issue, include that as well.

General Flash
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[*]Text may disappear sometimes when using masks or when rotating it. If this happens embed the font for the text in Flash so that Flash can treat the text like normal vector shapes and be able to mask it without problems.
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Animating
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[]To animate visual elements in Flash, they must be symbols. If you do not use symbols for you animations, Flash will try to convert your selection into one creating Tween# graphics in your library.
[
]Do not use ActionScript on movie clip symbols being animated through the timeline. This may cause the animation to break. This includes ActionScript like using the Color object to change an animated movie clip’s color.
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ActionScript
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[]Movie clip instances (and sub classes) cannot be instantiated with new ClassName(). Instead you must use attachMovie (or duplicateMovieClip). [more]
[
]gotoAndPlay/gotoAndStop will not work when used to navigate to scenes if the commands are placed inside a movie clip. Instead, you must go to a frame label with the format _root.gotoAndPlay(“frame_label_name”);
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