Using Director > Director basics > Introducing the Director workspace > Increasing or decreasing your view of the Stage |  |

Increasing or decreasing your view of the Stage

You can author in Director on a zoomed Stage—one that is either larger or smaller than the normal size of the movie. Additionally, the Stage includes an offstage canvas area within the Stage window but outside of the active movie area. This canvas area is useful for assembling your media either before or after they appear on the Stage.

The offstage canvas is also useful as a way to preload media in projectors. Sprites in a frame, but offstage, are loaded into memory so they are ready to play in the subsequent frame.

When you change the size of the Stage, any guides or grids you use to assist you with alignment will also scale to the zoomed size, and you can manipulate Stage objects just as you would on a Stage that is not zoomed.

The Stage window does not need to be in front when you zoom in or out.

To zoom the Stage, do one of the following:

| Press Control+the plus (+) key (Windows) or Command+the plus (+) key (Macintosh) to zoom in and increase the Stage size. Press Control+the minus (-) key (Windows) or Command+the minus (-) key (Macintosh) to zoom out and decrease the Stage size. (In Windows, if you want to use the keys on the numeric keypad, NumLock must be off.)
| You can press the keys repeatedly until the Stage is the desired size.
| Choose View > Zoom and select Zoom Stage In to increase the size of the Stage in increments, Zoom Stage Out to decrease Stage size, or a percentage to select a specific Stage size.
| If scroll bars are visible, click in the lower left corner of the scroll bar and choose a percentage. (To turn on scroll bars, choose File > Preferences > General and check Show Stage Scrollbars.)
| To zoom in while selecting an area of the Stage to center within the zoomed window, select the Magnifying Glass tool from the Tool palette. Click a point on the Stage to zoom and center.
| To zoom out while selecting an area of the Stage to center within the zoomed window, select the Magnifying Glass tool from the Tool palette. Press Alt (Windows) or Option (Macintosh) while clicking a point on the Stage to zoom and center.

The Stage's title bar indicates the zoom Stage size expressed as a percentage of the normal Stage size.