Thanks!

cheers

Based on your description, it sounds like you have at least three buttons: Prev, Next, and Pause/Play. If your Prev and Next buttons cause the main timeline to resume — effectively the same as untoggling the Pause/Play button — then it makes sense that your toggle will get out of sync. You’ll need to program your Prev and Next buttons not only to direct the timeline, but also to communicate with the Pause/Play button.

Since you’re not using on() for Pause/Play (that is, btnToggle), I encourage you to do the same for Prev and Next. By keeping all your code in a single layer, it makes your ActionScript easier to find and maintain layer (see my “Museum Pieces” article). It looks like clicking the Next button (for example) needs to continue doing what it currently does, and in addition, set btnToggle’s toggled property to false and send it to frame 1 of its own timeline:

btnNext.onRelease = function():Void {
  this._parent.gotoAndPlay(386);
  btnToggle.toggled = false;
  btnToggle.gotoAndStop(1);
}

Note the expression this._parent … you may have to adjust that path to suit, but the expression as shown assumes that your “mainmovie” target is the immediate parent of the Next button and that your Next button has the instance name btnNext. I’m not sure what “mainmovie” refers to, but you no longer need the dated tellTarget() function to instruct other objects. It’s often easier on the eye to simply use the same sort of dot notation to path to your objects as you’re already doing elsewhere in the code.

trey

btnToggle.stop();
btnToggle.toggled = false;

btnToggle.onRelease = function():Void {
this.toggled = !this.toggled; // this flip-flips the Boolean
if (this.toggled) {
this.gotoAndStop(2);
tellTarget (”mainmovie”) {
stop();
}
}
else {
this.gotoAndStop(1);
tellTarget (”mainmovie”) {
start();
}
}
}

__________________________________
example previous next actionscript:
on (release) {
this.gotoAndPlay(386);
}

thanks for any and all help.
trey

Terrific!

Your question encompasses quite a few sub-questions, which leads to a general principle on approaching any goal in Flash (and programming in general): big things are made up of lots of little things. This maxim has helped me through so many projects over the years, I’ve lost count. The basic idea — and it’s not revolutionary, just surprisingly hard to remember sometimes — is simply to break down massive goals into smaller ones until the small ones make sense. As you approach each step, master that step in isolation, then gather your acquired knowledge toward the main destination.

In this case, I would start with the gallery at lukamaras.com. Get that working solidly. Next, isolate the portion of that tutorial that responds to user clicks. Whatever handles the mouse clicks (an onRelease handler, presumably) can be instructed to perform other things as well. Whatever function is associated with advancing the gallery itself (or changing categories, or whatever) can make additional function calls — and those additional calls will be up to you.

This is where I’d recommend you begin the “isolation” portion of your endeavor. Save your work and start a new FLA altogether. In the new FLA, you’ll create the MP3 player on its own, in isolation, away from the code of the gallery itself. Work your way toward playing a series of play lists. You might start with Array instances at first, then progress toward XML. There’s nothing especially magical about XML … it’s just a way to separate your list of songs from inside the SWF to the outside. One of the benefits is an easier update (you can change the song lists without recompiling the SWF) and one of the cons is complexity (you’ll have to instantiate the XML class and handle loading the document, responding to its loading, etc.).

Any time a particular path on your trail gets too overgrown with complexity, break down your goal again. Maybe it’s time to create yet another FLA that deals with XML only. Practice creating XML objects and loading documents until you nail it. Eventually, you’ll build up to using XML in cahoots with the Sound class, which means eventually you’ll have an MP3 player that depends successfully on external play lists. Form there, you’ll be able to load new XML documents as desired, to play new songs, and that will be triggered by a function or method you’ve written. That function or method can be triggered from anywhere, including the gallery created from the lukamaras.com tutorial.