I have text in a movie clip that needs a seethrough background. The text is animated and hollow so getting the mouse to stay on the actual black part of the letter is nearly impossible. Is there a way to make it so that anytime the mouse enters the movie it will be recognized, not just when it is over the text. (while still keeping the rest of the movie clip seethrough)
oh, and I can’t make the movie into a button because I need it to stay in a visited state once it’s clicked.
Just create a new layer inside of your MC named “hitArea”. On that layer, draw a box with any fill/stroke, but make sure that the box is the same size as the area you want the user to be able to click on. So if your text is 120px by 300px, you’d want a box that’s around 130x310 or so – that way users won’t have to be EXACTLY over the text, it’ll have a little give.
Next, delete the entire stroke and set the internal fill to an alpha of zero. Now sit back and relax those eyes – your MC now has a hit area instead of lines you have to hover exactly over.
The basic premise of a hit area is that you place an invisible box/shape inside of your MC that you want to be considered the active part of the MC. It’s like when you’re creating a button (using the four-stage button-class in Flash) and you have the up, over, down, and hit – you’re just defining the hit.
Just remember, it’s always nice to have buttons with a little give around them. It doesn’t have to be a visible outline, but a hit area that’s a bit larger than the visible MC is always nice.
ahh I see. I didn’t know that it would also recognize invisible shapes as part of the MC. thanks,
Mike