RE: FLASH: Load movie & buttons problem

[Vishnevsky, Nelly]

Our site is pretty large, so it uses Load Movie to load separate .swf files

on demand.


Level 0 has the most generic descriptions with clickable buttons in various

positions on the screen.  Once a category is selected and the appropriate

button clicked, it loads another .swf movie with more detail information

into Level 1.  A similar relationship exists with the next level:  once a

button is hit on Level 1, another, even more detailed, .swf movie is loaded

into Level 2, etc.


The problem is that the buttons from the underlaying layers are still

active.  In other words, even though you are on Level 3 and don't see the

button from Level 1 below,  the cursor is still turns into an "active"

pointer on rollover.  Moreover, clicking on what seems like an "empty place"

leads to unpredictable for the user results.  I can't tell you how

frustrating it's been.


One obvious solution would be to combine all .swf's into one large movie,

loading into one level only and using Movie Clips.  However, the file size

would become out of control very fast.


Another thing I was considering was to use the "park" frames.  There is one

obstacle though:  if I park Level 0 when loading Level 1, how will I know

which frame did I call Level 1 from?  Once the user is done reading Level 1,

they should be able to click the "More" button and get back to the same

frame on Level 0 they departured from.  The same true for all levels 0

through 3:  once I'm done reading Level 2, I hit the "More" button, which

unloads Level 2 and shows me the frame underneath in Level 1 where I came

from.


What makes it even more convoluted is that there is more than one frame in

Level 0 from which the same .swf movie can be loaded into Level 1.  The same

holds for other levels as well:  there are many different movies that can

occupy Level 1 and from which the same swf movie can be loaded into Level 2,

and so on.


The last blurry idea stirring in my confused mind is to add Tell Target

action every time any .swf movie is loaded to turn all the buttons on the

underlaying Level into graphics.  This would be an extremely time consuming

effort though:  each frame can have as many as 50 different buttons, which

means adding 50 Tell Target commands upon every Load Movie???  Not even

mentioning making each and every button into a Movie Clip first.


Before I venture into this deeply, maybe someone can help me see if there is

an easier solution.  I'm sure I'm not original in my problem.  It's just too

bad that we found out so late in the process about the buttons being still

active even when covered with loaded movies on top.


		Nelly Vishnevsky

	        ________________________

		The Hillier Group

		e-mail:

nvishnevskyhillier [dot] com

		web:     http://207.78.206.16/



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