How do i call another movie clip to load up on mouse over

programming flash
1

What action do i need to use on a button to load a movie clip i have created inside the same flash file? I want to create a sort of windows start menue idea. I have created the movie of the menu moving up and i need to trigger this by a button.

Thank you for any help you can give me

David

2

What do you mean load a movie clip? Is it on stage or just in your library?

What is your level of action script knowledge, on a scale of 1 - 10?

3

The movie clip is in my library. Would it be easier if it was already on the stage? I have no knowledge of action scripting, ive just started to learn flash about a month ago or so.

4

ok… quickly take a look at the basics I’ve set down at www.centerspin.com in my tutorial 101 section. It’s sparce I know, but I’m working on content. Page 7 or 8 in the 101 tutorial details where action script can be placed, and how to do that.

Read that then reply back here and I should have a write up for you.

5

Movie clips can be set up to go in two ways. Either you can drag and drop an instance of the movie clip to the stage, or you can use action script to initiate an instance of that clip during run time.

I suggest for you, since you’re new and it will require less work on your part that you do the former.

so… create a new blank layer on your timeline and select the first frame. Click and drag a copy of the movie clip to the stage, and let it go.

Open your “instance” panel. (menu option
“Window/Panels/Instance”.

Select the movie clip if it is not already selected, using the black arrow tool.

In the instance panel, type in a unique identifier for this movie clip. (Hint: it doesn’t technicaly have to be unique. You could use the same name as the movie clip has in the library, as long as you were only going to have one instance of this movie clip on the stage.)

As long as you’ve placed a

stop();

action on the first frame of that movie clip it will sit in it’s first frame state for as long as you like.

To start it up, ie to get it to play, we have only to call out it’s name and give it a command.

This is taking into account that the movie clip is on the main timeline, not inside another movie clip, and that it has been given the “instance” name of “myMovieClipMenu”, in the instance panel.

if I had a button anywhere in the movie, even inside another movie clip, I could place this code on it to control our movie clip

on(release){
_root.myMovieClipMenu.play();
}

the “_root” tells our Flash player to look for the object called myMovieClipMenu (case sensitive), on the main timeline; and to tell it to start playing from wherever it’s playhead is currently located. In our case, frame 1.

You could place the following code in any frame of any timeline in your movie and it would have the same effect upon our movie clip.

_root.myMovieClipMenu.play();

you can likewise use any of the other basic control commands that you see in your action panel. (when you click on the plus symbol).

so

_root.myMovieClipMenu.stop();
or
_root.myMovieClipMenu.gotoAndPlay(“begin”);
or
_root.myMovieClipMenu.gotoAndStop(20);
etc

Keep in mind, you probebly will have to turn on “expert” mode to enter the lines of code as I’m showing them to you. That is under the options pull down in the upper right corner of the action panel. Get used to switching back and forth. Some things just can’t be done with the basic action panel.

Now… I know what you’re going to run into ahead of time, because I’ve done a couple dozen of these menus. You’re going to do an “on(rollOver){}” to have the menu pop out. But you’re not going to be able to have a button that extends over the button items in the menu (otherwise you can’t click on them), and if you don’t then the menu is going to colapse to it’s shrunken state once you roll off of the button’s hit state.

When you encounter this, you’ll be ready for another post probebly. The above should take you a while to get right.

6

Thanks alot for your help, it worked great, but now ive encountered another problem.
The reason i was using this menue was for track lists on a media player, unfortunatly since there is several lists to chose from, and each one will end up in the same place on screen once you have selected the track in the highest layer in the timeline, if you call another movie to load there, it loads underneath the other movie and cannot be seen. So how do i bring the movie to th front of the stage when i call it?

7

I’m not sure if I follow.

Can you send me the FLA with a detailed explination of the problem in a txt file, to [email protected]

8

Did you get the email i sent you with fla file?
Did you understand the problem when i set it out?
Have you had a chance to look at it yet?
Any ideas on how i can fix it?
Thanks
David