I’m not 100% sure I understand your question. For sake of clarity, it’s not a button, per se, that causes an animation to play; it’s the playhead itself. If you’re sending the main timeline to a Scene and that Scene has animation, the animation will play, as long as you used gotoAndPlay(). I wonder if you’re running into the issue discussed in “Why Doesn’t _root.gotoAndPlay() work with Scenes“? Have you tried forgoing Scene names in favor of unique frame labels (unique globally, across all Scenes)?

The basic approach I would use is this. Create an onRollOver event handler for the stationary movie clip that does the following: a) attaches the other movie clip and b) assigns an onMouseMove event handler to the attached movie clip. The onMouseMove event should set the attached clip’s _x and _y properties to the _xmouse and _ymouse properties of the main timeline (_root would be fine). If you need the attached movie clip to later go away, I would create an onRollOut event handler for the stationary movie clip that cancels the onMouseMove then removes that clip.

The exact syntax would, of course, depend on your usage of AS2 or AS3. If you wanted to get fancy, you could even attach the new clip once, then leave it attached and toggle it between visible and invisible in order to avoid having to re-attach it later.

thanks in advance

I have been using the “.onRollOver = function()” functions for this flash item - it’s really starting to annoy me now! I’ve uploaded the source code to : http://www.kdwebserver.co.uk/~sericaen/preview/src/fla/map.fla

If you could have a quick look at it I’d be extremely grateful! At the moment the links are in the last frame in the popupTop movie clip. If possible, could you send a reply to the email address that I posted this message with?

Thanks in advance!

Scott

I hope this force field metaphor doesn’t catch on, because it possibly obscures what’s really happening. There is a way to enable and disable mouse events (in fact, any events) for objects that support them. If you’re using on() or onClipEvent(), you’ll have to ditch those in favor of the event handling mechanism introduced back in Flash MX (see my “Museum Pieces” article for details).

When you’re handling events with dot notation, you can simply toggle that movie clip’s enabled property or even use delete to get rid of its event handler function altogether, then set it back again later. You’ll see an example of that sort of think the article I linked to.

Due to what I need the flash program to do, I can’t put the onrollover inside the movie clip. Is there a way to disable this “force field” without causing the rollover/rollout functions to stop working?

You’re running into a limitation of mouse-related events in ActionScript 2.0. If your movie clip already has an onRollOver event in place, then you can imagine a kind of “force field” on that movie clip. Since that button is inside the movie clip — under that force field, so to speak — mouse-related events for the button never make it to the surface.

There are a number of ways to work around this limitation, but the easiest I can think of is to get rid of that onRollOver event on the parent movie clip. Instead, put a new movie clip or button inside that parent in frame 1 of its timeline. Handle the onRollOver even on that inner movie clip/button. That way the parent movie clip won’t overshadow the events handled on that later button.

I have seen tutorials that are for me very confusing. Would you be willing to assist me? I can send you the fla if you could help I would be grateful.

Josh