Re: FLASH: action script/tell target query

[Marc Hoffman, Poison Dart Frog Media]

As you anticipated, I could not follow your description. I suppose if I had 

more time I could decipher it. But I think I get the jist of it, which is 

that you're travelling all over the timeline to create a few drop-down 

menus. A simpler, more conventional way to do this is to use just one scene 

with an array of movie clips. Each movie clip is one of your drop-down 

menus. It starts out invisible and stopped in its first frame, or stopped 

and tucked under the top nav bar. A parent button uses tell target to make 

one of the movie clips play, which drops its menu into sight. There is a 

stop action midway through the drop-down movie clip, which makes it 

"stick." At this position there are also buttons to Get URLs. You then use 

rollout from an invisible button, or rollover an invisible button, or 

rollover a different "parent" button, to TellTarget the movie clip either 

to play (which could result in a nice, smooth retraction of the menu) or to 

go to frame 1 and stop (which would be more abrupt).


At 05:23 PM 5/22/2000 , you wrote:


>hello,

>

>this is going to be a bit long (sorry), but i have

>many questions cos i'm stumped.

>

>i am implementing a flash navbar for a website.

>the content itself will be static html, leaving the

>flash to control the pages, so to speak.

>

>the navbar has a "parent" set of buttons that in turn

>activate a "child" set of buttons:

>

>---------------------------------------------------------

>|

>|   PARENT BUTTON 1   PARENT 2   PARENT 4   ETC

>--------------------------------------------------------

>|   child button 1   child 2   child 3

>-------------------------------------------------------

>

>my client has requested that the following behavior occur:

>

>

>_ on roll-over, the child menu rolls down and these two

>(the parent and child) corresponding areas "stick" allowing

>someone to use the child navigation directly.

>

>_ the parent buttons will not call a Get URL to any html

>pages. they will only need to control the child navigation.

>however, upon clicking on a child link, this should

>take the user to the corresponding html page.

>

>_ unless the user rolls over any other of the parent

>button, the current "selected" parent/child option should

>remain active, even on roll out.

>

>

>i have 5 parent buttons in this navbar. i am using six scenes

>in the fla (including the base scene). each scene is for

>the corresponding child area. i have six frames in each scene.

>

>on the base scene, i am using a single layer for

>all actions. the first frame i am using an

>action script as:

>

>If (location eq "about")

>         Begin Tell Target ("/aboutUs")

>                 Go to and Stop (about, "About us")

>         End Tell Target

>Else If (...

>

>Else

>         Stop

>End If

>

>each of the other frames (in the actions layer) in this fla

>has only a Stop action.

>

>i have separate layers for the parent and each child

>button areas in each scene of the fla.

>

>on the home scene, i am only labelling the frames for

>the different child areas.

>

>

>each of the corresponding scenes uses a similar framework.

>in the first frame of the actions layers for a given child

>scene (man, i hope this is making sense!) i have the following

>actionscript:

>

>If (location eq "services")

>         Begin Tell Target ("/ourServices")

>                 Go to and Stop (services, "Our services")

>         End Tell Target

>         Else If (location eq "...

>

>         Else If (location eq "about")

>         Get URL ("about.us.html")

>         Stop

>End If

>

>in other words, if "about" is the scene you're at,

>then call the correct URL and so on. (this might be

>wonky, and might be smarter to put into the child

>buttons themselves?)

>

>each of the other frames uses a Stop action, just as in home.

>

>ok, in this example child scene ("about"), the parent

>button is now replaced with a movie clip which i have given

>the Instance label "aboutUs" that i was calling with the

>tell target in the home scene.

>the movie clip doesn't have any other behavior. it

>is meant to indicate that you here (here, being the

>"about us" child area). this movie clip shows the

>highlighted state of the parent link on rollover to

>help indicate this.

>

>

>going back to the parent links, each button has

>actions (inside the fla itself) like this:

>

>On (Roll Over)

>         Go to and Stop ("frame label x")

>End On

>On (Release)

>         Go to and Stop (scene, "frame label x")

>End On

>On (Roll Out)

>         Go to and Stop ("home base")

>End On

>

>i chose to use <current scene> for these

>because each of the child scenes mirrors the

>home scene with the exception of the

>specific parts that refer to the scene one is at.

>i think this might also be a bit clunky, but

>when i tried to condense it all into one

>scene, i wasn't able to get the behavior i wanted

>at all.

>

>i'm wondering if there is a smarter way to implement

>this part of the structure as it seems like i'm

>just duplicating the home scene and only changing

>one or two things.ie to reference the

>bits in the home scene which will always be constant,

>and only have the appropriate corresponding changes for any given

>child scene? i sort of tried this, but the behavior

>was not as i expected.

>

>the corresponding child buttons in these areas use

>action scripts like this:

>

>On (Release)

>         Go to and Stop ("scene x")

>         Get URL ("y.html")

>End On

>

>

>in the html, i've done the following to assist in

>changing urls:

>

><PARAM NAME=movie VALUE="testing.swf?location=X">

>

>where X is whatever scene should be at.

>

>i think this should cover everything i've done with

>this flash movie.

>

>the problems i'm running into are:

>

>_ when i roll-over the parent buttons, i can't get them

>to "stick" on roll-out without a mouse click

>and even then, if the user rolls out anywhere,

>the parent button highlighting remains, but the

>child navigation cannot be retained, which the

>client claims is counter-intuitive.

>and i don't blame her because it actually makes

>understanding what is going on very confusing.

>somehow, there needs to be a dynamic relationship

>between where you are and what you're rolling-over.

>the click is acceptable for the client, but it

>should also behave the same on a roll-over. in other words:

>

>1. default state

>

>2. roll over parent button a

>

>3. parent button is highlighted and corresponding child

>navigation rolls out and stay there.

>

>4. if a user rolls over one of the other parent

>buttons, then undo 3, and highlight this new

>parent, roll out its child links and stay.

>

>if a user rolls out anywhere that is not another

>parent button, do not do any roll out behavior

>unless another parent button is then rolled over

>and/or clicked on.

>

>does this make any sense?

>

>i'm thinking, a possible compromise might be a

>an on/off type of clicking function on the button?

>

>

>_ when i click on a child button and get moved over

>to x url, i can't seem to figure out how to

>show in the navbar on this different page,

>where you are in the scene. it always comes up

>the default condition (ie, nothing "selected").

>

>_ the client does not want to use frames to implement this.

>

>

>i'm not really a programmer. after a lot of trial

>and error, i thinnk i'm a little better than fumbling

>with the action scripts :), but clearly, i've reached

>the limit of my expertise.

>

>what am i doing wrong? how can i make this work?

>

>if you want to look at an example, you can go to

>

>http://www.webworksconstruction.com/idem/index_05.10.html

>

>if you have any questions, cos it is a bit confusing

>to me at times as well, please ask.

>

>many thanks in advance.

>

>hasta. --dk



Marc Hoffman


Poison Dart Frog Media

Flash portfolio: http://www.dartfrogmedia.com/portfolio



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