Animate 2020 Preferences

There are some preferences in Animate 2020 that you may want to change:

• Property Panel or Inspector - In previous versions of Flash/Animate, once you opened this panel, it stayed open, until you closed it. In Animate 2020, if the panel is open and you click away from the panel, e.g. on the Stage or another tool, the panel closes, and opening it requires selecting Window>Properties or Ctrl-F3. This behavior applies to all panels, but I found it particularly frustrating with respect to the Property Panel since one uses it so often. If you want it to stay open choose Edit>Preferences>Edit Preferences and on the General tab, uncheck the "Auto-collapse Icon Panels" checkbox.
• Height of layers - In Animate 2019, if one added layers, one could have a total of 6 that would display in the Timeline area without making any adjustments. In Animate 2020, only a total of 5 can display and these 5 take a lot more screen space than the 6 did in 2019. To change this, choose Edit>Preferences>Edit Preferences and on the General Tab, change UI Preferences from Comfortable to Compact. Now 9 layers can display in the space that the five took previously.

Revised: March 22, 2020. Comments to Bill Pegram, wpegram@nvcc.edu