menu button help!!

[maowang]

Hello,
Okay, heres my problem, I have 5 buttons on my main movie. Idealy, whenever a user mouse over first button, its graphic symbol shows up and stays there. Then when a user click on other buttons, the graphic for the first symbol should disappear then the new graphic (for which ever button was click) shows up. For some reaon, my graphic will not disappear when I click other buttons, the only way to get rid of the graphic is to click on that button again. see attached FLA.
please help!
thanks

[pinkaboo]

yikes that's one scary movie layout, hmmmm where to start?...
I think you would be better off reorganising your structure, take those movie clips out from within the individual buttons for starters.
You should probably put all the content that you wish to access on button click within one mc and place it on the main timeline where it can be easily accessed by all button actions by telling it to go to different frames within it. (or an alternative: create 5 external swfs to be loaded into a holder mc on the main timeline, maybe better because then if you load into a mc any previous loaded mc is automatically removed cos it can only hold one thing at a time)
You can also use 5 instances of the same button with different code on them instead of 5 totally different buttons then too.
The problem with those mcs where they are at the moment is:
-you can't path to them because they are inside a button and in Flash 5 (don't know about MX) you can't target a button in the same way you can address mcs.
-you are duplicating content - ie the launch site button. You have duplicated it in each individual mc, whereas if you put all your content in one mc on the main timeline you can just put one instance of that button on a layer where it can be accessed from all frames within that movie. One button, one bit of code, much less complicated.
- your actual button code is on a button embedded in a mc within a button, so the pathing won't work, assuming that you had actually added code to tell Flash to clear the first graphic, which you hadn't! you are only telling Flash to go to Frame 5 on click, but not telling Flash to repark the movie on mouseout, or when you click on another button.
-the reason the button only resets on 2nd mouseover is because all your info is contained in an mc on the button, when you remouse over that mc is refreshed back to frame 1 again.

argh - I have to go do some proper work now but I'll tell you what, if I get time later I'll try to have another look at that fla for you, see what I can do or at least try to post something a bit clearer and probably less garbled - heh, sorry about that, it's a start though isn't it?

hopefully back later :) good luck
K

[pinkaboo]

Hi, ok I had a very quick go at restructuring that file for you, on reflection I plumped for the first method I mentioned rather than using external swfs on this one, (though using a bunch of separate swfs can be good for keeping your website in manageable, easily downloadable chunks).

I've just got your menu working so that the picture changes on button press, I wasn't sure if you needed the menu to reset to default at any point or not, but for what you seem to be aiming at I think it'll do. :)

Hope that helps anyhow, if not just post again :D I'll do my best.

K

[maowang]

thanks pinkaboo,
i'll work on it tonight, hopefully it works
thanks for the comments and the fla
really appreciated