RE: FLASH: Load movie & buttons problem

[Marc Hoffman]

At 11:46 AM 12/11/98 -0500, you wrote:

>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.


Hi Nelly.


Well, I think you're right that this problem probably calls for some very

complex solutions unless you're willing to re-do your interface so that

it's always the same.  That is, the menu is static and every movie or clip

or scene that it targets always starts at the same point in its timeline.

A partial solution, short of this, is to load a movie in an intermediate

level.  This movie would contain just one object: a full-stage-size,

invisible button that would have no actions attached to it.  Advantage: it

would disable all button actions in lower levels.  Disadvantage: you'd

still ahve the active "hand" cursor, and now it would be everywhere.  If

your active buttons have obvious rollover states, this might not be

unacceptable.


Having a movie remember where it was when last called requires having a

movie clip embedded in it which is updated regularly (if not every frame)

to a stopped frame that "remembers" (via a label) where the main timeline

is.  That means every frame in the main movie timeline must telltarget the

movie clip to go to a unique frame.  This movie clip must always be present

or else it will reset itself, so it must appear continuously in the

timeline, and be active even in the parked frame.  To return the main movie

from its parked state to its visible state, you would TellTarget the

movieclip which would steer the main timeline to where it was.  One way to

do this is that the movie clip is arranged in pairs of stopped frames.  The

first of the pair is the marker frame, the one where the movie clip was

sent to keep track of the main timeline.  It would have an appropriate

label, like "main movie is at frame 112."  The second frame of the pair is

an action that tells the main movie to go to frame 112.  Hence, if the main

movie is parked, then anytime you TellTarget the movieclip to go to the

next frame, it will command the main movie to go to the appropriate frame.


Lots of coding.  Have fun :-)





Marc Hoffman

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