Faking it

programming flash
1

Ok, so I’m working on our new portfolio page, and I’ve got the look pretty much down.
(http://www.reaction-design.com/reaction2005/)

The thing that is bugging me is the menu bar at the bottom. I like how it looks and everything, but I’ve got it set up so there are 2 invisible movieclips above it, one above the other. The invisible mc that is closest to the menu, tell’s the menu to open, and the one that’s farther away tell’s the menu to close. What bugs me, is that when you mouse over the invisible mcs the mouse changes to the hand icon, as if you were clicking on a link, and I think it’s kind of distracting.

Is there anyway I could get rid of the the invisible mcs and do something based on where your mouse was on the page? Like if _ymouse is greater than 500 (the size is 1000 x 600, and the menu is 70px high) then send varibale to menu.

Does any of this make sense?

Thanks in advance.

2

y not just use a little script to keep the arrow visible instead of the hand?:wink:


MovieClipName.useHandCursor = false;
3

You could even put a on (rollOver) script onto the menu mc and tell it that when the mouse is over the menu, to gotoAndPlay(“open”); on (rollOver) gotoAndPlay(“close”);. And you can add an invisible graphic named hit_area (a protagonist in all my fla’s) and put it inside the mc underneath everything so as to specify the hit area…

You dont need all the invisible mcs just to control one tween and one rollover.

Ted

4

You don’t even need all those tweens! Just write a few lines of AS including the “hidden” tween functions for MX04 and you’ll be golden (and make the menu “feel” more dynamic and well-structured).

5

I will try just making the menu mc the hit area, once i get home. I think i did try this before, but i couldn’t select anything in the menu.

Actually it is dynamic, and there is no tween within the menu itself.

Thanks

6

ok, so i’ve tryed out some of the suggestions.
http://www.reaction-design.com/reaction2005/index-us.html

I moved the rollover/out stuff to the menu mc, which works well, but it doesn’t allow any of the buttons within the menu to function. Any ideas?

dru_nasty thanks for the mc.useHandCursor technique. I didn’t know anything about it.

I’ve added the .fla (http://www.reaction-design.com/reaction2005/index-us.fla) if anyone is interested in it.

7

Ok. I’ve figured it out. I’m still not sure why you’re not allowed to have a button (or in my case, a mc hiding as a button) inside another movie clip that has a rollover state.

After searching the forums here i found this: http://www.kirupaforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=69161&highlight=rollover
which is actually from a flashkit tutorial. It works for me.

Thanks everyone for the help. I’m sure it won’t be the end of it.