[F8] Actionscript or Stage, which one?

I'm building a gallery. I've been working all in actionscript but it seems to be getting overwhelming and I'm maybe halfway through.

It seems to me I could save a lot of time doing some of the stuff on the stage. This way I can decorate things a little more. Make tweens easier to work with and such.

I guess I'm not really sure which way to go. Should I do everything in actionscript, or should I do mostly AS and the other stuff like graphics on the stage? Now that I'm talking about it that latter seems the way to go.

Thanks for any suggestions.

I woudl say AS.. you can still create movieClips.. and 'theme' them how you see fit.. but they just sit in the library.. until you place/attach them to the stage.

I guess it also depends on what your end goal is here.

Thanks whispers,

So you're saying I could just make the movieclips, that have the graphics, before and have them available in the library?

If I do it that way I could still call up the number of movieclips I need depending on how many pages I have.

Any more good ideas anyone?

I say use as much dynamic content as you can. It offers flexibility and and makes updating way easier in the end.

That mean.. images should be loaded externally using loadMovie();

I also make each 'page' (section) of my web site an external.swf and load it in using loadMovie() as well...

my MAIN.swf is somewhat just a SHELL, with my navigation, some minor layout stuff/graphics, logo..footer..etc.. and the main content section(s) are empty/blank movieClips that just sits there waiting to get content loaded into them

That sounds like a great idea! Good organization.

What I'm looking to do is create the # of pages I have dynamically depending on how many folders are created on the server. So I can upload pics into folders of "ceremony", "reception", "wedding party", etc... and all of these folder names will be a new page. I don't think I can use external swf's if I don't know how many pages I will have.

What should I do then, so that I can keep the great organization you suggested?

Thanks.

Your gonn hve to first figure out how you are going to get the directory structure.

I guess Im not following about you not know how many pages your going to need in a website.

Maybe I don't need "pages". The info from the server will be retrieved by php and probably with some xml. Aside from that, I'm going to have a "ceremony" page, and a "reception" page because most weddings have that.

But what if the photographer has tons of pics from the reception and wants to split it up and put those pics into 2 folders instead of the one. So now I'm going to have an extra "page" of thumbnails.

I hope I cleared it up some.

Any ideas now? Thanks.

Well you need to find out how EXACTLY the data you need to display is going to be delivered to you..that will open (or close) many options for you.

if the php page is generating some XML on the fly.. you need to parse the XML to use the data first...

you can use Flash to call a php script that will scrape ay directory and truen the file names back to Flash, you can dump into an ARRAY.. and loop through them as you want... doesnt matter where the pics are located.. (well ok it does in the end ;)..but not for now).. you can still load them. :)

I mean if you have an 'xtra' page..you'll know.. and you'll have to plan fo rit.. or make sure he puts any split image directories inside a PARENT IMAGES directory.. so you can still scrape the file names..and return them to flash.. or create an XML file and use a tre compoenent to show the directory structure or something.

I'm feeling like I should just make the pages a set number and ask him what categories he will be using. I have too many other things to worry about. Like figuring out the php and such. The xml I have set up is local and is working fine. Just need the php to scrape the directories and make an xml file. Then I should be ok.

I probably have more questions but I've already taken a good amount of your time. I thank you for info. It has helped.

I believe I'm going to your route and make external movies named "ceremony" and such, and then load the thumbs, dynamically, inside them.

Anything else I may be missing?

Thanks again whisper.