Pausing Flash/Actionscript itself....not timeline

1

Hey everyone,

This is my first post here at Kirupa and Im really hoping I can get some help.

Im writing an application that parses xml to display a menu system in Flash. The same loop that grabs the xml creates a new movie clip for each node(menuitem)

I need to set a delay between the duplicated movie clips so they appear one after another rather than all at the same time. Ive tried a few different things (interval and timer) but havent got it to work. I have no doubt that this is possible but I am fairly new to AS. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Here is the code with a little comment where I want what I want.

 
var item_spacing = 60; 
var item_count = 0;
var item_count_next = 0;
var newy = 0;
_global.itemNumber = "";
function CreateMenu(menu_xml){
 _global.items = menu_xml.firstChild.firstChild.childNodes; 
 
 for (var i=0; i<items.length; i++) { 
 
   var item_mc = menu_mc.attachMovie("menu_item","item"+item_count, item_count);
   item_mc._y = item_count * item_spacing;
 
   if(item_count > 3){
    item_mc._y = item_count_next * item_spacing;
    item_mc._x = 350;
    item_count_next++;
   }         
 
   item_count++;
   item_mc.txt.text = items*.attributes.type;    
 
   item_mc.main_btn.onRelease = function(){      
    item = this._parent._name.toString();
    itemNumber = item.substr(4,2);   
   gotoAndPlay(10);
 
   }    
/*I NEED THIS LAST LINE IN THE FOR LOOP TO PAUSE FOR .5 SECONDS */
 
 }
}
var dining = new XML();
dining.ignoreWhite = true;
dining.onLoad = function(success){
 if (success) CreateMenu(this);
 else trace("Error loading XML file");
}
dining.load("dining.xml");
stop();