External movie clip problems - you can click through them!

[Graham]

I have lots of interactive things on my main stage - lots of buttons and little movie clips which play when you rollover them.

On this main stage, I'm creating an empty movie clip and loading an external swf file into it. This works fine - but there is one problem. If you can remember where the interactive things on the main stage are, you can make them work by clicking THROUGH the external swf. The swf is on a separate layer to these movie clips, though, and its layer is above their layer. In theory, the clicks you make on the external swf shouldn't have any effect on the clickable objects below it - but they do. How can I stop this, and make the loaded swf 'solid'?

[Flash Gordon]

//something like
for (i in _root) {
 this[i].enabled = false;
}

[Graham]

Without meaning to be extraordinarily dense:

Should I assume that code goes on the first frame of the external swf?

I presume 'i' should be changed to something else, is it the instance name?

[oldnewbie]

The easiest way to solve this problem is simply to add an invisible button (with no script attached to it...) on the LOWEST layer of your loaded external movie itself, covering the whole area of your loaded movie and/or of the whole stage area of your main movie if it's larger. This will disable any underlying buttons or movie clips.

You can even remove the pointing finger icon on that invisible button, with...

my_invisible_but.useHandCursor = false;

When you unload this movie, the underlying symbols will again be enabled.

[Flash Gordon]

attached:

press_mc.onRelease = function() {
    var box = _root.attachMovie("box", "box_mc", 2);
    box._alpha = 50;
    for (i in _root) {
        _root[i].enabled = false;
    }
}
one_mc.onRelease = two_mc.onRelease = function() {
    trace("clicked");
}

[Lienne]

Oldnewbie; disabling the hand is exactly what I needed! Thank you!

[Graham]

Thanks for all your help and examples - problem solved.