Advanced GUI construction in Flash

[Insomnia]

K, here's my prob: [MM Flash]
I can't seem to successfully create buttons that, for the "up state", use looping .GIF-image movies that I've already finished [for a glowing-pusating effect]. The "over state" is supposed to be another animation that appears in an overhead graphic window that I created. My biggest problem is that [while closely following Kathrine Ulrich's "Visual Quickstart Guide"] I can't drag a movie symbol onto the workspace like it says --like I'm *SUPPOSED* to be able to do. Another reason this is all so hard is that I'm trying to put 2 animations into one button. Also, really, I'm lookin at making a GUI in Flash, and we didn't cover advanced GUIs while I was in school @ PCS. I know it's possible, It's gotta be.
PLEASE H.E.L.P!

(I wanted to use the frustrated red face, too:-)

[Jesse]

CTrl F8 to create a new button. Then you should go straight into editting the button. Sleect the up stat frame and use Ctrl L to popup the library, then drag and drop in your animation (not that if it's an animated gif you will have to import that into its own movie clip sot hat Flash can play it as an animation, otherwise Flash will show it as a static graphic).

To make it a movie clip you can just create a new movie clip (Ctrl F8) and then use the import feature, if it's a multi-framed gif it should prompt you and you can state that you want each frame made into a sepearte Flash frame within this new movie clip you've just created...

Cheers

Jesse

[Insomnia]

I think that creating the glowing effect using a movie symbol takes care of the first half of my problem :-) I was trying it with twees before.

I still, however, can't get the "up state" to animate using the movie clip symbol I created. I also tried using the "clock pencil" tween to see if I needed a tween and not a movie symbol. The button itself works, but neither a tween, nor a movie symbol will animate for me with simple buttons enabled.

Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong? To recap; I have 7 GIFs, all the same shape and color blue except that each is lighter than the last, (to create the glowing effect). They cycle 1,2,3,4,5,6,7, then 6,5,4,3,2, and so forth. I want all this to go in the "up" state. Then the "over" can be just one of the lighter images for a reaction effect. The "hit" is supposed to be a red vesion of these GIFs.

(There's an animation I want to tie in with the "over" state on another part of the stage later, but I'm not there yet)

To me it seems such a simple concept. It's seen in video games all the time.

Props Jesse! that last response did give me a jump on all this!

[Jesse]

Hrmm we're having some server issues but I managed to upload this file:
http://www.actionscripts.org/help/example.html

that animation is a button Up state... mouse over it to see it work...


get the source at:
http://www.actionscripts.org/help/example.fla

Cheers

Jesse

[Insomnia]

This should do tha trick!

And thanks for the example file.
Mabey I just had to publish it for it to work (?)

Again, props.

[Insomnia]

Thought I would share the project results so far, in case anyone was curious:

http://nautilus.shore.net/~tcooney/index.html

It's 1.11 MB, so I know I need a preloader, been trying to impliment one, I'm trying to teach myself actions. the Macromedia online help files are confusing to me, to say the least.

[Jesse]

Wouldn't load for me, but then again I think I'm on an outage atm so that might be why :)

Cheers

Jesse

[Insomnia]

Actually, I had it up, it *is* 1100 kb, so then I went and tried to impliment a preloader, and have been having all kinds of problems.
I posted my problem at http://www.actionscripts.org/forums/showthread.php3?threadid=1627.
*THEN* (ghrrr!) just when I was going to try what Strok offered, Flash 5 decided it won't load at all now, I get a couple different error boxes. I defragged, Ran ScanDisc and Norton, (all clean). I re-installed, (nope). Removed -- and even wiped any references to Flash in my registry! -- and re-installed, (nope). Now I have to call and keep a MM tech on the phone until it runs...

I whipped up the graphic HTML version for now (I have to NEways). I'll let you know (on this thread) when the Flash version's up.

Neither version links to much right now. this site is in it's infancy. Just testing appearence and buttons. (the time consuming stuff).