How do you control more than one movie!!!!

Hi everyone...I am trying to teach myself the ins and outs of animaton movies etc with Flash 5 (I've been using it for about a week now) so i can liven up my home page, and I'm stuck, I have created a corner menu with 8 buttons, 3 of which have hidden menu's,that when the button is clicked the movie is activated, but, the problem i have is that there are 3 movies in the timeline, what action can I use on each button so that it only playes the movie that corresponds to the button, any help would be gratefully appreciated, thanks in advance.
Michael

each hidden menu will be it's own film, and then set on the stage. You have to then give each one it's own instance name (cntrl+I) and then in the button's ActionScript:

on (release) {
tellTarget ("film1") {
gotoAndPlay (2);
}
}

leave the first frame in 'film1'empty if you don't want to see it sitting in your site until it's clicked.
and in 'film1' you'll need a stop in the last frame so that it won't keep repeating.

Eulci.....thanks for your help, but, after I added the actions that you recommended and then doen a "test movie" when I clicked on the button I tried it on this message popped up in a separate window...Target not found: Target="links1" Base="_level0.instance1".....links1 is what I named the movie in the instance behaviour section....any other help you could give would be appreciated, thanks in advance.Michael

where is your button? on the main stage or in a film? if it's on the main stage and your intance name is on the main stage it should work I think...

Quote:

---

Originally posted by eulci
where is your button? on the main stage or in a film? if it's on the main stage and your intance name is on the main stage it should work I think...

---

I have all my buttons on one layer, should they all be on separate layers and also I have them all as buttons, should they be movie's, thanks

ok i will just tell you what i did rather than trying to see what is going wrong....I have just spent the last 20 hours doing what your trying to do! *LOL*

so you create your symbol MC (movie clip) and put your hidden menu (links1) into that you then drag that MC onto your main stage and while it is a cross hairs bring up your instance panel and name it... (well i keep the names the same so i dont get confused!) so lets name the instance 'links1' as well.... then you would in your button action for links1 say

on (release) {
tellTarget ("links1") {
gotoAndPlay (2);
}
}

I have all my buttons in the same layer and yes you want buttons not movies for them......well thats how i have done it but i am new at this too! lol

anyway hope i understood what your were asking and hope this helps!

Cheetah :)

Thanks Cheetah....maybe I shouldn't have tried something so difficult to do, this is my attempt at anything in flash, you and Eulci are probably on the right track and its probably something minor that I have done/put in the wrong place or something silly like that,I'll just have to keep trying different things till I get it right (with others help, no doubt) and keep pulling out my hair with frustration,lol, I'll have to change my name to badly soon :)