Noob question

I’m having issues finding out how to give a mc an instance name in mx so i can use tell target, i know how in flash 5 but not in mx…any help would be great

Well, the good news is that tellTarget() no longer exists in Flash MX. Instead you can just use the dot syntax to refer to your movie clips.

To name a clip, place an instance of it on teh stage, open up the properties panel, and in the bottom left hand corner there should be an input box with ‘Instance Name’ written in it. Scrub that out and put in your own name. Then to refer to it, user code similar to:

_root.mymovieclip.goToAndPlay(2)

for example, telling the MC mymovieclip to play frame number 2.

tell target is now deprecated in flash mx…

will still be supported, howevere, better to use the new standard…

i.e where there is an instance name of movie clip called coprmc…

to access it you will go:

on (rollOver) {
_root.corpmc.gotoAndPlay(1);
}

thanks for the help…just so i understand…do i have to add the _root.

if so what does that do…please excuse my ignorance…

think of your symbols like folders on your computer (navigating in dos)

if you have your symbol instance on the main stage it is at the _root however if you are trying to apply actions to a symbol that is within another symbol you need the path like you would folders on your computer _root.symbol1.symbol2 etc.

_root is useful if you are within a symbol (i.e. not on the main stage) and you want to apply an action from that to another symbol then your action has to follow a path back to the root and then down to the other symbol … so instead of typing …/…/symbol1 you can type _root.symbol1

hope this helps

p.s. you still need to apply instance names for some things and the way you do that is to select the symbol and then in your properties window on the bottom of your screen look in the left and find the input box that says “instance name” … type whatever name you want in that box

I figured I would jump in with this quick little tip…

To open the properties window quickly you can press CTRL+F3.

This comes in handy.