Re: FLASH: Button after loading

[Marc Hoffman, Poison Dart Frog Media]

Hi Manish,


You're doing something peculiar and I cannot quite tell what it is from 

your description. Ordinarily, a Flash movie loads continuously until 

completely loaded; it should not stop loading just because it hasn't 

completed a scene. Even a Stop action does not stop the loading process. I 

assume this Flash book is local access (not web). So, unless your movie is 

stuffed with many. many megabytes of bitmaps, I'm not sure why loading 

would not occur in a few seconds.


Putting everything on the main timeline is certainly an option. You simply 

copy over the frames of the scenes to a single scene. You can still place 

Stop actions in the main timeline everywhere you want it to pause or to 

give a movie clip time to play. To make playback proceed from there, you 

can have a single button, always present, in a layer with no keyframes 

(except frame 1). The button has the action OnPress (or OnRelease -- your 

choice), Play.  The backup button can use Go To Previous Frame if you put 

each "scene" in a single movie clip that exists in a single keyframe. 

Otherwise you will need some ActionScript or a new button instance for each 

"scene" (my use of quotes is because it's no longer a real scene). You can 

also have an action in the last frame of a movie clip if you want to 

advance the timeline automatically when the movie clip has played once; 

you'll need TellTarget information. Write us again in that case; TellTarget 

takes awhile to understand the first time, but it really is not complex and 

once you get it you'll have a very powerful tool that is pretty fundamental 

to interactivity in Flash.


It's almost never a good idea to assign actions in button symbols. Apply 

them on stage  using Instance Properties for the button instance. If a 

button will have several instances with the same action, apply the action 

to a single instance, then cut and paste the instance (or add a keyframe to 

create a new instance of everything on that layer) and the actions will 

carry over to the copy.


If for some reason the movie really does take too long to load, you can use 

If Frame Is Loaded or Frames Loaded. There are many schemes to do this. One 

is to have the navigation buttons in frame 1 of a movie clip, and have a 

second frame in that movie clip that is blank. Then use TellTarget to 

toggle the clip between frames, making the button appear and disappear. In 

Flash4 you could set visibility of the button using Set Properties. More 

simply, you could put the buttons in the movie clips of what once were 

scenes. Again you'll need TellTarget anytime the action is speaking from 

one timeline (for example a movie clip) to another (for example main timeline).


If you have the time to work this out it will boost your Flash knowledge up 

a couple of notches.  Good luck.


At 09:51 AM 11/04/1999 , you wrote:

>Hi All,

>     We just finished a book in flash for a client. It is a single movie with

>8 scenes. The first scene is a loading scene and the rest are the pages.

>I have put a simple back-front navigation button pair to take me through the

>pages.

>The problem is, the navigation buttons appear before the next scene is

>downloaded and users tend to keep clicking on the next button and nothing

>happens.( I have programmed the button to work only after the next scene has

>been downloaded with if frame is loaded.. SCENE..frame etc in the button

>actions.)

>I tried putting the similar action in the movie symbol of the button, to

>make it have a blank frames loop till the next scene is loaded and then

>appear. What I figure is that the SCENE choice gets disabled in symbols. And

>so I am stuck.

>The scenes have looping movie symbols playing, so I have to put a stop

>action at the end of each scene timeline, so.. putting the if frame is

>loaded on the main time line is not an option.

>

>How do I execute the simple task of having my buttons appear after the next

>scene is loaded.

>

>Thanks for any help.

>Manish




Marc Hoffman

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

.

My Flash Portfolio: <http://www.dartfrogmedia.com/sampler>

(featured in Flash 3 Web Animation, by Ken Milburn)



flasher is generously supported by...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  Streaming Media WEST '99 Conference & Exhibition

  "The Worlds largest Internet Audio & Video Event"

 December 7 - 9, San Jose Convention Center, California


Reserve your space today at http://www.streamingmedia.com

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  To unsubscribe or change your list settings go to

http://www.chinwag.com/flasher or email

helpchinwag [dot] com