Flash :: Swf Byte Loss

Convert AMF Byte Array To Regular Byte Array
HI,

I recently had some code that read a stream of bytes from a stream reader into a byte array.

For various reasons the code had to be changed and I can no longer fill my byte array with bytes from the stream.
Meaning that I cant use the readBytes functions.

Instead of using the streamReader to get my bytes I've had to use byteArray.writeObject to fill my byteArray.

As I understand when writing an object to the byteArray it is encoded as AMF. This is giving me trouble when I try to read data from the byte array as I did previously when I was using the stream reader.

For example, previously when I was filling my byteArray using stream.readBytes I could write

"chunkId = bytes.readMultiByte(4,"utf")" and I would get a string value returned "RIFF"

Now when I try the same "chunkId = bytes.readMultiByte(4,"utf")" reading from the AMF Object in my byte array it returns a garbled string

My question is is it possible to convert the AMF object that I have into a regular byteArray?

Thanks
dub

Convert BYTE To KB
hi there,

I am going to convert the TOTAL & LOADED strings to MB. Can u please help?

TOTAL = CONTENTS.getBytesTotal();
LOADED = CONTENTS.getBytesLoaded();

Cheers

Byte Preloader
I want to make a photo gallery that the user will be able to navigate through by simply using NEXT and PREVIOUS buttons.

I want to be able to have a progress bar showing that the next photo is loading each time the next or previous buttons are pressed.

I want to put the galley in one movie and a picture in every other frame with the preloading code in between each photo frame.

Can this be done, or is there a better way to do this.?

Leroy

Byte[] Image
hi all
i have page is aps.net and flash. On my page asp.net i get in database a image is type byte[] on Database
I want show this image on flash
how will i do that ??

GetBytesTotal() = 12 Byte? HELP
I load an external file, the size file is 273.073 byte, but when trace tot the size is 12 byte. Why?

this.onEnterFrame = function() {
stop();
_root.mini_b.loadMovie(_root.Promo);
//_root.Promo Contains the Movie name
//_root.mini_b is a clip on the root

var tot = _root.mini_b.getBytesTotal();
trace (tot);
var car = _root.mini_b.getBytesLoaded();
trace (car);

if(car==tot) {
trace ("finish");
delete this.onEnterFrame;
}
}

Getting Byte Sizes
Hi all,
Just a quick question, if i am using sound/music in a flash movie and i would like to create an instance for it then play it in actionscript, how would i go about getting the size of that sound file?
Here is the code i used, btw the sound file has a linkage name of 'tune'

Code:
musik = new Sound(this);
musik.attachSound("tune");
musik.start();
varsize = musik.getBytesTotal();
A dynamic text field is placed in the doc to show the value of varsize but when the movie loads, it shows as undefined!
Can anyone shed some light on this?
Thanks in advance.

Please Help External Byte Preloaders
Hello everyone!

I was wondering how to make a bytes preloader file that can serve as preloader for an external movie.
How do I do this?

Thanks everyone!!!!

Byte Preloader Problem
Hi,

I've just made a byte preloader for a movie.
In my movie I have imported an mp3 and set de linkage for playing it.
When I play the movie it doesn't jump to the next scene. Even my bytes aren't counted. (my text doesn't change)
If I remove the linkage of my mp3 everything works fine, except for the problem that my sound doesn't work anymore.
Is normal behaviour?
Could anybody help me with this?

THX

Byte Array In Flash
Hi All,

I am developing a client server application where my server is built in Java and client in Flash MX. I am using xml socket for my connection. Now the problem is my server is sending me data in byte array format where the data is in xml format. My flash client is not able to read the data as it is sent in byte array. When I am sending the data as string it's cool.

Can anyone tell me is it possible to read byte array in Flash? If so then how?

Thanks in Advance....

Amit

Get Byte Size Of Scene
Hello everybody,

I have a question.
I have a flash movie with serval scenes in it. Is it possible to just get the size of just one scene instead of the complete movie?

Thank you for you time.

Greetz Edwin

Simple Get Byte Preloader
On my preloader I have the get byte which displays in a dynamic text box. The display of #'s when I test the movie is tons on decimal places.

How can I set it to a certain number of decimal places or just none?

Getting The Byte Total Of An Object
Hi,

Is there anyway of getting the byte total of an object created at runtime which is a combination of some loaded objects, library objects and API drawn?

I have a dynamic object thats coming in at 60k, even when I remove all the objects from it !

I'm using the loaderInfo.bytesTotal

Byte Array Webservice
I want to send a picture from Flash as a bytearray via webservice to a MS SQL, and then be able to read it into Flash again. Do anybode novs if this is posible?

XML Socket And Termination Byte
Hello,

I am programming an application to control an specific device by a flash interface.

This device allows telnet connection.

In order to do this telnet connection I am using XMLsocket.

When I proceed to this connection the connection is stablished ok.

But this device ends his messages that it sends with "
" not with "" as we need in XMLsocket connection-

This device also are waiting messages ends with "
" and XMLsocket sends all this messages with byte zero termination.

Is there any possibility to solve this problem?

Is there any property to define the end of message character in actioscript?

Is there any other possibilitie to open a telnet with actionscript not to send XML objects?

Thank you very much.

Socket And 0x00 Byte...
I've been working on some code to load data using the new flash.net.Socket class, but I seem to have a problem with files being sliced at '0x00' bytes...

For example, should I try to send (download) AA BB CC DD EE FF 00 11 22, and then query the bytesAvailable, I get 6 as opposed to 9, which is the actual packet size...

Is there a bug with the bytesAvailable getter? Or does the socket close on ZERO/NULL bytes... perhaps it may be something else?

[as] Reading Bits From A Byte
Hi guys,

I have a byte value and I need to be able to read X number of bit ranges from that byte.

Hopefully the following will show you what I'm going on about, but if not let me know and I'll try to explain it a little better.

Is there a better way to do this? Using parseInt and substr to create the mask value seems a bit OTT and I need this to be as fast as possible.

ActionScript Code:
var byte:Number = parseInt("11010110", 2);

trace( parseInt("11", 2) ); // 3 (bits 1->2)
trace( parseInt("0101", 2) ); // 5 (bits 3->6)
trace( parseInt("10", 2) ); // 2 (bits 7->8)

var s:String = "11111111";

trace( (byte & parseInt(s.substr(0, 8), 2)) >> 6 ); // 3
trace( (byte & parseInt(s.substr(0, 6), 2)) >> 2 ); // 5
trace( (byte & parseInt(s.substr(0, 2), 2)) >> 0 ); // 2

FLV Video To Byte Array?
Is it possible to store an FLV video to a byte array? The reason why I ask is that I want total control over the frames on the video...

Could there be a better way?

Byte Count In Dynamic JPEGs
For the purposes of creating a good preloader (one with realistic time estimates and progress) I am trying to figure out if there is any way of assessing the bytes loaded and bytes total of dynamic content (images).

I have tried the getBytesLoaded and __Total methods on movie clips, and that just reports the SWF size. I have thought about loading an external SWF that in turn imports the JPEGs, but I figure that it would simply bring in the SWF, then check its size, which one still only report the SWF size and not the images.

I am looking for an accurate way to assess the size of this dynamic content.

Any thoughts?

How Do I Make External Byte Preloaders?
Hello everyone!

I was wondering how to make a bytes preloader file that can serve as preloader for an external movie.
How do I do this?

Thanks everyone!!!!

Reverse Byte Display Preloader
Ave,

Anyone can help me have a pre-loader that shows the bytes in Reverse.. that is, if the movie is 300K.. I want to display size beginning from 300 and going down to 0...

Thanks.

Embedding Double-byte Characters
Long time reader, first time poster.

I designed a Flash homepage for my company, and recently was asked to update the file to support double-byte characters for our international markets. This puts me in somewhat of a dilemma.

I originally designed/coded with only the US in mind since we were testing it out on that market initially. I assumed if it deployed internationally that there were Flash developers in those countries who could alter the code to suit their needs. However, this appears to not be the case, or if they do have them then they are too lazy to look at my code (which is very well commented, if I do say so myself).

The Flash loads an XML file with URLs to a few images, and text for buttons with links to landing pages for the buttons and the image displayed. All of that works wonderfully. The SWF file is only 75kb, and the XML images loaded are less than 30kb each, so for the US the load times are minimal (I have a preloader for the slower connections).

In order to get the Flash to display foreign characters in the text boxes, I have to use Unicode in the XML. No problem; there are plenty of Unicode translators. However, to get the SWF to display the characters and animate/tween, I have to embed the font (I'm using "Arial Unicode MS" which supports characters from literally all countries). When I tried to embed the characters (selecting Embed > All), the filesize goes up from 75kb to 7.5MB. Now, I know I can select different character sets or type in the characters themselves, but this isn't an option since the XML is updated every week with new images, text, and links. I do not want to create a separate SWF for each country using DBCS because that woud require creating and distributing 10+ SWFs, and would be a pain to update later.

Is there any way to decrease the embedded font size, or to dynamically load/embed character sets using ActionScript 2.0 (don't have Flash 9 yet)? Either by creating another XML entry with "characters to embed" or something? Should I just write detailed instructions to their designers explaining how to change their embedded font and/or character sets?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

--- Reid

*I apologize, but I cannot submit code for review or samples to look at due to my company's confidentiality/NDA policy.*

Byte Count Of String Object?
I need to send UTF-8 string data over an ActionScript socket. The protocol we're using requires that each message be prefaced with the byte count of the following payload. What is the best way to determine the byte (not character) count of a String object?

The only way I have found to do it is to instantiate a new ByteArray object, write my String into it with writeUTF, reset the ByteArray position property to 0, then check it's bytesAvailable, and finally subtract 2 from that value.

My two questions are: Is there a better way to do this? and, why do I need to subtract 2 bytes? Does the ByteArray have a BOM or ???

AS3 Shared Object Byte Array
So I'm trying to store a compressed ByteArray in a SharedObject. It kind of seems to work, but then I have a problem. When I retrieve the ByteArray from the SharedObject I uncompress it, convert to BitmapData, wrap it in a Bitmap (this is so ridiculous!), and finally add it to the DisplayObject list. Sometimes it works sometimes I got an error saying that the data couldn't be uncompressed.

After a bit of thought I think I've come to the realization that the ByteArray in the SharedObject is just like any other Array in memory and when I uncompress the "copy" I made the original was also uncompressed. Even though I never ordered a SharedObject.flush() the so must have been written. So that the next time I came back the data in the shared object was already uncompressed.

Does that seem to make sense?

So my plan will be to "clone" the data out of the SharedObject. But how to do that? The old Array.slice() trick doesn't work on the ByteArray. Obviously I can just copy every element, but I'm worried that could get slow. Any other tricks?

Another approach I guess would just be to always recompress the data when I'm done with it so that it remains compressed in the SharedObject. Hmmmmâ€¦ Anybody got any ideas?

Here is my code. It is messy because this is all new to me as is AS3 and its structure. If anybody has any good pointers on how to work with SO and storing lots of ByteArrays (and other info) that would be great!

Attach Code

var so:SharedObject = SharedObject.getLocal("faces");
if (so.data.face1==null) {
var myLoader:Loader=new Loader();
myLoader.contentLoaderInfo.addEventListener(Event.INIT,onLoadInit);
myLoader.load(new URLRequest("Face0.png"));
} else {
var oldBytes:ByteArray=so.data.face1;
oldBytes.uncompress();
var bmp2:BitmapData=new BitmapData(256,256);
bmp2.setPixels(new Rectangle(0,0,256,256),oldBytes);
var bm2:Bitmap=new Bitmap(bmp2);
bm2.x=256;
oldBytes.compress();
addChild(bm2);
}
stage.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_UP,clearShared);

function clearShared(e:MouseEvent):void {
trace("clearing shared object");
so.clear();
}

function onLoadInit(event:Event):void {
myLoader.contentLoaderInfo.removeEventListener(Event.INIT,onLoadInit);
var bmp:BitmapData=new BitmapData(256,256,false,0x808080);
bmp.draw(myLoader);
var bm:Bitmap=new Bitmap(bmp);
addChild(bm);
var theBytes:ByteArray=bmp.getPixels(new Rectangle(0,0,256,256));
theBytes.compress();
so.data.face1=theBytes;
so.flush();
}

Possible To Check If A 0 Byte File Exists?
I know it is possible to check if a file exists using loadVars().
But what if the file is a text file for eg "file.txt" without any data in it?
Can I use actionscript to check if the file exists?

Get Byte Data From Media Content
i wanted to sci wanted to scale several pieces of
media being loaded up into a series of empty
movieclips through a looping function and
an incrementing variable

but had difficulty getting it to work
works fine its own, but if i try to
apply looping funciton or incrementation
nothing happens

was thinking perhaps empty movieclips were
being scaled before media content was properly
loaded into them

and thought of using getBytesLoaded + Total
in order to check byte size of media content
loaded into empty_mc's and total size of media
content

but whenever i use the "getBytes" AS all i get
are the Byte data of the empty_mcs that are in
the flash movie

how do i get byte data
of media content and byte data of
media content that has loaded into empty mc?

what might be better method of scaling aray
of media through looping funciton and incrementing
variable?i

Problem With Double-byte Characters
I am having a problem with entering double-byte characters in a SWF in English Windows XP.

When I set Chinese in "Language for non-Unicode Programs", I can enter double-byte characters (not only Chinese, but also Japanese) in the TextField or TextInput (the MX 2004 component).

But when I switch it back to English, I can't enter any double-byte characters anymore, each of them is shown as ? instead.

Does it mean Flash Player isn't a Unicode program? And, is there any workaround for this?

Thank you.

40K Byte Size Limit On LocalConnection
As you may know, there is an irritating 40K byte size limit on local connection parameters.

If you need to send a large passage of text or an XML object as a string, you will quickly bump up against this ceiling. I thought I'd share a little modification to LocalConnection that lets you send practically limitless strings. It simply splits them up into as many "send" statements as necessary for them all to remain under 40K.

This needs to be placed in the sending file:

ActionScript Code:
LocalConnection.prototype.sendString = function(call_id, method, str) {
this.byte_max = 40900;
this.send(call_id, "getReady");
var parts = Math.ceil(str.length/this.byte_max);
for (var i = 0; i<parts; i++) {
var success = this.send(call_id, "transferData", str.substr(this.byte_max*i, this.byte_max));
if (not success) {
trace("[WARNING: LocalConnection send failed]");
return false;
}
}
return this.send(call_id, "callMethod", method);
};

This needs to be placed in the receiving file:

ActionScript Code:
LocalConnection.prototype.connectLimitless = function(call_id) {
this.connect(call_id);
this.getReady = function() {
this.str = "";
};
this.transferData = function(str) {
this.str = this.str+str;
};
this.callMethod = function(method) {
this[method](this.str);
};
};

Usage:
in the receiving movie:
receiving_lc = new LocalConnection();
receiving_lc.doSomething=function (param) {
trace(param);
}
receiving_lc.connectLimitless("lc_name");

in the sending movie:
sending_lc.sendString("lc_name", "doSomething", long_string);
//--OR-- use as normal since connectLimitless also just connects as usual
sending_lc.send("lc_name", "doSomething", any_params);

[as2] [preload] Incorrect Byte Information?
Hi

I'm using a movieClipLoader in a file called "loader.swf" to pull in my main swf - which works wonderfully, except that it reports the file to be loaded as almost 400Kb, when on disk the file is 90Kb. The help says that movieClipLoader reports the compressed size - but it seems as though it's reporting the uncompressed size? I've checked the publish settings - compress movie is ticked, and when published the file is 90Kb. If I untick that box - it publishes at around almost 400Kb - about the same size as the loader is reporting. (the loader swf is about 2Kb)

Anyone else encountered this?

I'm getting around it by displaying a percentage instead of a byte size, but I'm worried that it is actually loading 400Kb and not 90! How do I tell?

Frame Rate And Byte Loading Question
I have a simple question I'd like to get answered, it will help me optimize my files. At least I think this is a simple question to answer. Its a difficult question to word though! I'll do my best to ask it in a way that makes sense.

(I used to have a book that answered this but its long since been lost. I don't even remember the name of it. )

Here it is. How many bytes can you safely stream on one individual frame? For instance, on the report, on frame 1 I'll have 3500 bytes there, then on frame 2, I'll have 2 bytes. It will continue with 2 bytes until I load another element or object onto another keyframe, say on frame 20. Then it will show that I have 1311 bytes or something like depending on how big the object is. Now if you have a large background image like I do at around 100411 bytes, its going to take a while to load that image.

Now if you have frame rate set to 30fps, you can't load all that data on the keyframes 1 - You can't load that much data in that short amount of time.

So, though the report says you're loading 3500 bytes on frame one, it isn't saying that frame on will play in the correct amount of time if the object you're loading there is too big to be streamed that fast.

But how do you know exactly how many frames it will take to load that object? I'm trying to use a connection speed of 56k that a dialup user might have as my benchmark. If you a 3500 byte object, how many frames will it take to load that object for a user on an average dialup?

Lets look at the first object on fame 1 at 3500 bytes. If you can only load 100 bytes per second on a dial up, ( and I have no idea how much can be loaded) then, in reality, its going to take 35 frames to load that image. ( or at least the time it would normally take to play 35 frames) So, thought the report says it was loaded on frame one, if you load an obect on frame 10, then you're pushing too much too fast. Right? So you need to wait until the 36th frame, to ensure that the first object has been loaded?

At any rate, it really would be good to know how many bytes a user with a 56k dialup can down load per frame.

Or am I way off base here?

Have I misunderstod the way objects load into the timeline?

btw, I am reading the optimization articles on this site, hoping to find the answers.

Coordinating Byte Preloader With An Alpha Graphic?
Hi all,

I'm using a getbytesloaded preloader on my website in conjunction with a loader bar which scales using:

this._xscale = ((_root.getBytesLoaded() / _rootgetBytesTotal()) * 100);

this works just fine.

However, in the background, I want a blurry image which becomes more focused the closer the site is to being loaded. I have created two jpegs in photoshop of the same image, one is blurred, one is not. I created the fade effect by creating a movie clip, layering the two and fading the blurry one out to reveal the focused one.

Essentially, how do I get the movie clip of the image transition to play just once in coordination with the percentage the user has loaded? Or is there a way to place the two images on the main timeline and add some Actionscript to the top blurred image having it it fade to zero the more of the site is loaded, thus revealing the clear image below?

Any help is greatly appreciated. In fact I'm pretty desperate.

Thanks.

Cyrillic & Double Byte Languages In Flash 4/5?
hallo,

got a bit of a problem, and was wondering if anybody has any experience to help give some pointers.

I am going to be creating a series of education modules in non-Latin(e.g Cyrillic, Korean, Chinese etc.etc.) languages, and Im trying to find a solution to how to author them.

The main issue is that all the source code is provided in word files, which show up fine on my system, but as soon as I copy and paste the text into my text fields it all comes out in the dread "??????????????" format.

Now as much as I can discern from Macromedia's circular logic tutorials, the only way I will be able to see the actual text pasted as it should be is if my machine is running the same codepage as the text I am pasting (so if my machine was running in Korean, I would be able to see Korean, but not say Japanese).

Beyond that, the big kicker is that I am most likely going to have to export my files as version 4 or 5 (due to my client's corporate web standards), which immediately exlcudes the use of MX's Unicode support.

Sooooooooooooooooooo, my question is this, and is more aimed at bi-lingual users (hoepfully Russian, its that first one I have to tackle), but is more or less this. When you authored movies in older versions, what steps did you have to take? Did you author in the English version of Flash, paste your Russian source text, and it all worked out fine?

If your explanation gets too long, PM me and we can talk.

Any help or insight or even tutorials (non-Macromedia plz, their official ones makes my head spin and never really answer anything).

Thanks!

Unverse

Preloader Shows Wrong Byte Size - Please Help
Hello,

I hope this is an easy one but I can't see it.

I have a simple preloader showing this:

eg. Loading ... 23k of 419k

BUT >>> the preloader says the total number of bytes is 419k but in windows I can see the swf file is 282k.

Any ideas why? there are no external movies just 3 txt files that load in later and they are only 1k each!

This is the preloader code I am using:

Quote:

loadk = _root.getBytesLoaded() / 1000;
loadtotal = _root.getBytesTotal() / 1000;
loadSize = "Loading ... " + int(loadk) + "k of " + int(loadtotal)+ "k";

Any help much apreciated as I need to finish this today )

Cheers

AndyFlash

Byte Size Of Clips Loaded Using LoadMovie()
I made preloaders for dynamically loaded SWF files, and realised that the getBytesLoaded() and getBytesTotal() do not return the actual SWF file size.

It is typically twice the actual file size... I suspect its because the reported size has the file loaded in URL encoded format.

But question here is... was the file transmitted in URL encoded format, or did Flash just compute the BytesTotal based on the encoded content?

Right now I'm just showing percentage loaded, as the kB display would be misleading to the visitor!

ContextMenuItem Captions Wt Double-byte Text
Hi All,
anyone know if it is possible to use double-byte text in a ContextMenuItem caption? I've tried and get "??????" in the place of the arabic text i'm attempting to show in the context menu.
Any advice much appreciated,
Sinead.

Is It Possible To Get Total Byte Of Multiple Exernal Files?
Hi guys,

I am trying to build a preloader that loads multiple external swf files with ONE big preloader, however I need a script that somehow gets the total bytes of all the external files. I just need something that checks it and returns a value that i can use later.
Does anyone have something similar? I have been searching but no luck.
All help greatly appreciated.

Thanx

Files For Friendsofed Book 'Byte-size Flash MX'
Does anybody have the source files for the friendsofed book "Byte-size Flash MX"? Since the company went out of business, their ftp site no longer functions.

How To Create Byte Preloader Which Includes Movie Clips?
Hi. I have a flash movie I'm doing. I have a preloader as the first scene. It was working fine at first (uses getBytesLoaded) but when I changed some of my stuff to movie clips it stopped working. A couple of the movie clips, such as the content for the scrool pane at the end are linked for actionscript. If anyone has any guidance it would be truly appreciated, thanks.

Javascript Bothers Double-byte Character Desplay
When I open a popup window with on(release) commande in a menu bar, all the Japanese characters in the bar (dynamic text) transforms into half-byte characters which causes display problems with non-Japanese OS PCs.

Even on Japanese OS, you can see double-byte transforms into single-byte. What can I do?

5005: Unknown Error Optimizing Byte Code
Normally when I search for an error to get help on a resolutoin I can find something, this time, I've found NOTHING, not here, not google, nothing.. anyone know what "5005: Unknown error optimizing byte code" is? or am I the one and only freak that found it!!

I'm running Flash CS3 and AS3, freakin fast computer (Dual quads...) what other info might I need to give anyone to help me with this? LOL

I added the import fl.video.FLVPlayback to my project, and it started doing it, commented it out, and its still doing it.. so I'm not sure whats up with it...

5005: Unknown Error Optimizing Byte Code
During routine build and testing, I start getting an error 5005: "Unknown error optimizing byte code" when I try to build my main .fla, even if there were no changes to the .fla or any of its associated files.

After closing Flash, starting it up again, and then reopening the project, everything works.

Has anyone else seen this?

5005: Unknown Error Optimizing Byte Code.
When are you guys going to fix this bug?

http://www.adobe.com/go/kb405257

I believe the error message I'm getting randomly:

"5005: Unknown error optimizing byte code."

Is the same bug as this knowledgebase entry. I read a blog that claims you can fix it by compiling on the command line and just specifying more RAM for the JVM as a parameter. So why can't you guys just fix this with issuing that parameter through the IDE? I tried turning off optimization and deleting the ASOs to no avail (which is another suggested remedy).

Basically my Flash CS3 project compiles fine on XP. But I moved to CS4 on the mac and now I get this error randomly. (While still keeping the FLA in CS3 format)

This seems like a simple bug to fix for Adobe, but a MAJOR problem for developers as Flash projects get more complex.

So when are we getting a fix?

LoadVariables/php/MySQL -> Fail In Displaying Double-byte Characters
I am working on a chinese MX project. Using loadVariables to grasp the Traditional Chinese (big5) content from the MySQL by php.

With a view to show the content anywhere, including Mac OS and English computer with Chinese characters support, I am going to change the data to unicode. However, I fail , even using utf8_encode() function in my php file.

The chinese characters are showed well on Chinese PC, but not on Mac or English PC.

I am crazy now! Any help is appreciated.

Thanks!

I'm At A Loss
i'd like to create a "jeopardy"-style quiz game for use in an educational setting, but i have practically zero expereince with flash. the game doesnt need to be complicated, just categories with 5 questions, when $ amount clicked on, question is shown full screen, another mouseclick, back to category view. if at all possible, i'd like to be able to load dift categories and questions from a text file. can anyone point me in the right direction to get started with this? or is it beyond my very limited abilites?

thanx!

At A Loss, Here Is My .fla, Please Help
Hey everyone, I posted a few days ago asking for help but the suggestions I got didnt seem to get me anywhere, I've tried alot of stuff with no success, I think I need a real flash wizard to help me. I have this one last thing to do but I cant get it to work and its keeping me from moving forward on this project. Here is my fla (3 mb) http://notos.bartolsfeet.com/hall2.fla

What I'm trying to do is make a scroller so that everything but a medium sized rectangle is masked, and so the user can scroll up, down, left, right to view the entire movie (basically I'd like for everything in that fla to scroll in unison). I was hoping for something similar to this http://www.flashkit.com/movies/Effec...6691/index.php
but at this point as long as everything in that fla will scroll in unison with a 'mouse over' and the animations and actions still work will be PERFECT lol, I'm desperate!! ;P
Thanks alot to anyone who helps

At A Loss...
I am trying to create a drop down menu and I thought I had done everything correctly. Apparently, I have not because when you mouseover the menu item, the hand appears but nothing drops down. I've spent the day pulling my hair out and going over everything and can't figure out where I've gone wrong. I've attached the file of my monstrosity if anyone cares to take a peek.

Thanks so much!

Bridget

Var Loss
I create a var in one frame:

Code:
stop ();
_root.onEnterFrame = function (){
var tempUsername:String = userInput_txt.text;
var tempPassword:String = passInput_txt.text;
trace(tempUsername);
}
next_btn.onRelease = function (){
if (userInput_txt.length >= 6 && passInput_txt.length >= 4 && passInput2_txt.length >= 4){
if (passInput_txt.text == passInput2_txt.text){
gotoAndStop ("NewUser2");
delete _root.onEnterFrame;
}else{
alert_mc.gotoAndStop ("CreateUserError2");
}
}else{
alert_mc.gotoAndStop ("CreateUserError1");
}
}
cancel_btn.onRelease = function (){
if (saver.data.existingUser){
gotoAndStop ("Login");
}else{
alert_mc.gotoAndStop ("CannotQuit");
}
}
In the second frame that var (tempUsername and all of them) become undefined. Why is this? (The second frame is in the same scene)