For many developers, the Flash 5 timeline is very frustrating to work with. If you've like to get your productivity back, go into Preferences and turn on the Flash 4 Selection Style and Flash 4 Frame Drawing options. The Flash 4 Selection Style option will allow you to select frames on the timeline using the Flash 4 method The Flash 4 Frame Drawing option will display the little dots and hollow dots that give you more visual feedback on the timeline than the Flash 5 timeline does by default.
Another little gem in the Flash preferences is the Shift Select option. The default selection mode in Flash is to have everything you click on be selected. Forcing you to click on an empty part of the page to deselect. This can be very frustrating--particularly when you're working up close and there is no easy access to an empty part of the page to deselect. If you turn on the Shift Select option you can specify when you want to add to the selection by holding down the Shift key when selecting objects.
