Create an Array instance to store your references:

var containers:Array = new Array(clip1_mc, clip2_mc, clip3_mc, clip4_mc);

Now you have an array (a list, basically) that contains the instance names to your movie clips. You can call the variable what you like, but I chose containers because that’s the role these movie clips play — they’re containers for your images.

Next, refer to the “Jump Randomly” article I linked to before to find the custom shuffle() function. Use that function to re-arrange the elements of your containers array. Now that they’ve been shuffled, you can create your MultiLoader instance and invoke its addClip() method as before — except, instead of specifying movie clip containers by name, you’ll refer to them via their references as stored in the containers array … and because it’s been shuffled (mixed randomly), you can reference your movie clip’s in order, from zero to three (thus making four references):

ml.addClip("image1.jpg", containers[0], {onLoadProgress:progressA, onLoadInit:initA});
ml.addClip("image2.jpg", containers[1], {onLoadProgress:progressB, onLoadInit:initB});
ml.addClip("image3.jpg", containers[2], {onLoadProgress:progressC, onLoadInit:initC});
ml.addClip("image4.jpg", containers[3], {onLoadProgress:progressD, onLoadInit:initD});

Thanks for your comments! Something in my memory is telling me — suggesting, more like — that I replied to you personally via email, months ago. If I didn’t, then I apologize profusely for waiting so long to reply! An unloadClips() method sounds like a great idea. Whenever I get around to updating this class (and there’s no saying when that might be), I’ll be happy to keep your suggestion in mind.

To Chuck …

The container clip is determined by the addClip() method (it’s the second parameter), so you could populate an array with references to your containers (clip1_mc, clip2_mc, etc.) and use the shuffle() suggested in “How to Jump Randomly to Frame Labels without Repeats” to mix them up. At that point, you could step through that array with a for loop to invoke addClip() — or heck, you could even do it by hand:

// assuming the array has already been shuffled ...
ml.addClip("file1.jpg", containers[0], {onLoadProgress:progressA, onLoadInit:initA});
ml.addClip("file2.jpg", containers[1], {onLoadProgress:progressB, onLoadInit:initB});
ml.addClip("file3.jpg", containers[2], {onLoadProgress:progressC, onLoadInit:initC});

What I want to do is to ramdomly load and unload the images into the empty movie clips.
So, for example image1.jpg might load into clip2_mc and then unload, image4.jpg might load into clip1_mc etc.

Can you help?

This is a really organized class. Thanks for it. Reminds me of all ajax libraries these days the way you wrote this class. I think you should consider writing your own library and releasing it as open source with all the cool classes that you have written.

Finally, I think adding an public function unloadClips() would also be very useful when all clips need to be removed before loading the second set. Since this class tracks all the registered clips&handlers it should also be able to unload them.

Thoughts?

Thanks,
Mandy.

I’m not sure I fully understand your question, to be honest, but that said … have you read the follow up entry to this first one? Part 2 features a private getGroupProgress() method.