Beginning a Flash movie with a scene other than the first scene of the movie?

[syrinia]

I deeply apologize if this has been covered before. I can't even imagine how to search for this question. I will do my best to explain the situation.

I am making a Web site with a top and bottom frame on each page except for the home page. There are seven sections in this site (ex. about us, contact us, etc.).

In the top frame I wish to place a Flash movie which contains the navigation and a section-appropriate movie clip. I have made seven scenes within this Flash movie, one for each section. The navigation calls the appropriate scene for the section (ex. gotoAndPlay ("aboutus", 1);).

Right now the movie automatically begins with the "about us" section. This will be a problem if a user decides to go to the "contact us" section or any other section first. How can I make a movie load the appropriate section in the top frame without having to make seven different movies beginning with each different scene?

I hope this makes sense. If not, let me know and I'll try to explain it more clearly.

:) Thanks in advance.

[jordan]

It sounds to me like you are making it harder on yourself than you need to. If both frames are filled with flash content there is no need to use a frames interface, just use a Flash movie. Simply make the "Navigation Bar "one movie clip at the top of your Movie, and the other pages their own individual MC's. Use "Show / Hide" ActionScripting for each nav button to control what page, or MC is displayed on the bottom half of your Movie.

[Jesse]

You have indeed made it a bit hard on yourself. Your best bet would be to use FCOmmands and Javascript to tell the menu frame what the current section is and thus send the movie to the right scene, but that gets complicated, see this tutorial:

http://www.actionscripts.org/tutorials/intermediate/FS_Command_JavaScript_Library/index.shtml

Cheers

Jesse

[syrinia]

Thanks so much for your help. I think, however, that I might need to clarify a little.

The bottom target frame is all html and I have the 7 navigation links as a footer of the page. The problem is that when they link to a section using the html frame's links, it starts the movie at scene 1 instead of the appropriate scence for that link.

I am wondering if there is a way to sort of anchor link the movie so that an html link will tell the movie to start on a particular scene.

Also, If the user enters the site on a page other than the home page, the flash movie again starts on scene 1. So I basically am looking for a way to make sure that the 7 html pages in the bottom frame always correspond to the 7 flash scenes in the top frame.

I am trying to find a way to do this so that I dont have to have 7 different flash movies on 7 different htmls in the top frame. I would like to use only one movie to improve load times.

Thanks again for your help.

[Jesse]

That is what I assumed you were after and the only method short of having 7 separate Flash movies and framesets, is to use FSCommands and Jscript. See the tutorial.

Cheers

Jesse

[syrinia]

ok. I'm sorry. thanks.

(I'm not good at JS, that is why I'm confused... but I'll figure it out.)