Flash Tips : Layer Names

One of my pet peeves in programming is when I’m maintaining code that another person has written and they don’t use descriptive variable names. For example, I may see an equation written this way:

a = b * c;

instead of a much more informative:

fVoltage = fCurrent * fResistance;

The same can be said about naming layers in Flash and Photoshop. There are many .fla files I have perused which have layers named Layer1, Layer 2, etc… These are the default names Flash assigns to new layers. When you’re maintaining a rather complex project file, nothing is more irritating than trying to find which layer a certain text graphic is on, or which layer the bouncing ball movie clip is on. All you have to do is double click on the layer name and rename it to something more descriptive. Then you can identify the layer at a glance. Which example below would you rather maintain?

Give your layers descriptive names.