FLASH: Buttons and movie clips on top of each other

[Angelique Gulermovich Epstein]

Hi everybody.  I hope that there isn't some basic concept I've missed out

on.  Here goes...


I'm on a project which is meant to teach prose revision online.  Right now

I'm working on various proof-of-concept animations, and in one case have

had to do a real kludge (is that how you spell that?).  I'd like to know if

it's necessary to do what I need to do in an ugly way, or if there's some

"right" way to do it I'm missing out on.


There are exercises in which the user is supposed to click on a word, and

then the phrase including the word moves.  Simple.  What's less simple is

when it's a long sentence, and there are multiple "live" words.  I've used

tell target; there are text buttons and movie clip text animations stacked

on top of each other.  Here's where the trouble comes in.  After the button

is pushed, it has to go away (because the button is the word itself, which

is moving in the clip), but I can't do anything to remove it on the central

timeline, since the business end of the movie is really in a single frame.


What I've done is put in a filled rectangle to cover the button in each of

the movie clips, and ordered the layers accordingly.  Gosh, it's ugly.

There's got to be a more elegant way.


I can't figure out a better way to do this, and would greatly appreciate

some help.  Although I know where the instructions are about how to set the

MIME

on a server, I don't know how to tell whether it's set or not.  If someone

can tell me where to find out how to do that, I'll gladly check it out.

You can see it at

<http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/web/angel_out/foo_for_michael/testintnew.html>, but

as I said, I don't know if the MIME is set.  The .swf won't tell you much,

anyway; please also note that this isn't finished work.  You can download

the .fla file at

<http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/web/angel_out/foo_for_michael/Howeverintnew.ZIP>, or

I'd gladly send it to you directly.


Oh, one more question.  The movie needs to be able to tell when all of the

buttons have been pushed, so that then it can go on to more movie.  (That

is, once the user has complete this stage of the prose revision, the

animation needs to continue.)  How can

I do that?


Thanks!


Yours very truly,


Angel


P.S.  I've just noticed something with the list which may account for its

lack of activity.  If I reply to an earlier post, my client addresses it to

the sender, not the list.  In my header there's no "reply to" entry as

there is on every other list I know of.

Hvart ero that svic ein,         er ec sia thicciomz,

etha ragna roc,         r�tha menn dauthir?


Is it dream-sight only my eyes behold,

Or Ragnarok, where dead men ride?


                                        --Helgakvitha Hundingsbana II.40


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