how do I hide a strip of animation, until mouseover?

[Oxymoron]

heelo again.
I would like to create a strip of animation (i.e. a flashing square) which is only triggered when a user place their mouse over a link.
I know this would have to do with the mouseover event in a 'button's properties, but how do I create a strip of animation 9which would simply loop) that is not read in, and displayed by the ENTIRE animation strip???
any and all comments, or suggestions welcome!
thankyou all
JoE

 

[oldnewbie]

HeeeeeeeeeeHaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

...but how do I create a strip of animation (which would simply loop) that is not read in, and displayed by the ENTIRE animation strip???

That's going to need a little clearing up!

ldnewbie

 

[Flashgordon]

I'm only a relative beginner but surely you have something like this:
On your flashing square movie, make the first keyframe blank, with a stop action. Put the loop in frames 2-10 (for example) with an action at frame 10 to gotoandplay(2)
Your button mouseover should tell the MC to gotoandplay(2) and the mouseout action should tell the MC to gotoandstop(1)
Therefore, while the mouse is out, the movie is blank and therefore invisible.
Is that what you're after?
Andy.

 

[MACROBRAIN]

First off you need a button to trigger this effect, so whatever your using to trigger the animation to begin has to be converted into a button. Secondly, build your animation as a seperate MC (movie Clip.) In one of the MC layers, make one named Actions. Now before you start tweening and rotating and alpha fading your new MC think of this, you don't want anything to show up in the first keyframe of this MC. So in order to achieve this start building all your cool stuff on the second keyframes for all the layers, this ensures nothing will showup when you drag that MC onto your stage. Back to the actions layer of the MC, put a stop action in the first keyframe of the MC on the actions layer. This halts the MC from playing until you tell it to. Whether you loop the animation or what have you, this is your call. Drag the MC to the stage, preferably on its oown layer of scene1. Also make sure to have your button on it's own layer too. This helps to keep things organized. Name the MC you just dragged onto the stage by selecting it then choose the instance tab, where it says "Name" put a name in, and no spaces eh! Ok this is needed because the action we tell the button is to look for that MC named whatever you named it, and to play it on a mouse event. So on your button setup your mouse event should be like on mouse event, "roll over" | then choose tell target, pick the MC that you gave a name too | then choose goto and play frame 2 of the MC. What this does is When the button is moused over, goto and play the second keyframe of the MC. Well hope this helps, i have the source file for this movie if you'd like to di-sect it. I can email it to you if needed.
Cheers,
Macronut
Instructor
Multimedia|Web designer
Red Deer College
mailto:macronut@rjspowerbuilders.com