Re: FLASH: Tell Target question

[Marc Hoffman]

At 04:48 PM 5/13/99 -0500, you wrote:

>I'm trying to do a Tell Target to an MC. It will occupy the same 

>portion of the stage


Not sure what you mean by the stage.  Usually that refers to the visual

representation of the movie and it appears below the timeline in the

authoring environment.


 that a series of buttons (one of which is 

>triggering the MC) is located on so I thought I'd have a graphic of 

>the stage that would fade out and then pull up the new information. 

>Only problem is that if I put the MC after the objects on the stage 

>it doesn't show in the properties window and if I put it in the last 

>frame of the current timeline the current stage is on top of the 

>playing MC.


I doubt I'm following you, but you could put it in a higher layer, couldn't

you?  it doesn't matter what layer the MC is in.  What matters is that it

is present in the timeline, meaning that it has been introduced in a

keyframe (could be the first frame of the movie, which by default is a

keyframe) and has not been removed except, if you wish, in a keyframe that

comes later than the place in the timeline where you need it to play or

receive TellTarget commands.


I'm sure I am just missing something basic but it's 

>driving me up the wall.

>

>Another question is on what everyone does to do placement of their 

>MCs since the first frame is set to be blank. I have been copying the 

>final MC stage


This makes me think you are using "stage" as a synonym for  "frame."  Am I

right? :-)


 >into the first frame, using that for placement and 

>then deleting that but that seems incredibly awkward. Is there a 

>better way?


The neatest trick I have used is to begin creation of a mc by drawing

directly on the stage to get the right placement and the approximate size

and shape of the mc's appearance.  Then select what you've drawn, hit F8,

and make it a mc that you then complete building in symbol edit mode.  BTW,

between this trick, duplicating and modifying symbols, and redefining the

name of the object in instance mode, you can do some fast manipulation of

objects on the stage while maintaining other instance properties such as

instance names and button instance actions.


That failing, you are right to place a copy of a visible frame into the

first frame. To make the job simpler, place it in its own layer in the mc

timeline.  Then change that layer to "guide" when you no longer want it

visible.  It will not become part of the .swf output, but it will always be

there (by removing the "guide" attribute) when you need it.



Marc Hoffman

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

marcdartfrogmedia [dot] com (mailto:marcdartfrogmedia [dot] com)

Play a virtual marimba at: <www.dartfrogmedia.com/dartfrog> (featured 

in the book Flash 3 Web Animation by Ken Milburn).

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