Buttons in a child movie won't work while loaded in parent movie

[Troop]

I have an external swf (sub.swf) that loads into my main swf. The external swf has buttons of its own...that I would like to use to load additional external swf's in its place. I click on the buttons and nothings happens.

My current code is as follows:

All of the following code is in my main.swf
================================

//Location where the external SWFs will load
var Xpos:Number=18;
var Ypos:Number=10;

//Movie variable
var _externalMovie:MovieClip;

//Loader variable
var _swfContainer:Loader=new Loader();

//The default external SWF that is to be loaded
var defaultSWF:URLRequest=new URLRequest("swfs/sub.swf");

//Execution of external SWF loading
_swfContainer.load(defaultSWF);
_swfContainer.x=Xpos;
_swfContainer.y=Ypos;
addChild(_swfContainer);
_swfContainer.contentLoaderInfo.addEventListener(f lash.events.Event.COMPLETE, finishedLoading);

//This is done afer the swf is loaded
function finishedLoading(event:Event)
{
_externalMovie = MovieClip(_swfContainer.content);
}

//Universal Button Function
function btnClickMain(event:MouseEvent):void {
removeChild(_swfContainer);
var newSWFRequest:URLRequest=new URLRequest("swfs/"+ event.target.name +".swf");
_swfContainer.load(newSWFRequest);
_swfContainer.x=Xpos;
_swfContainer.y=Ypos;
addChild(_swfContainer);
}

//Accessing the external SWF
function activateExternalSWFelements(event:MouseEvent):void {
_swfContainer.contentLoaderInfo.addEventListener(f lash.events.Event.COMPLETE, finishedLoading); //necessary to see if ext swf has loaded before accessing movie clip in ext swf

function finishedLoading(event:Event){
//now that external SWF has finished loading, we can manipulate it's elements
_externalMovie.media.addEventListener(MouseEvent.C LICK, btnClickMain); //button in sub.swf with an instance name of media
_externalMovie.archives.addEventListener(MouseEven t.CLICK, btnClickMain); //button in sub.swf with an instance name of archives
}
}

==================================

External swf has no code except for a stop action.

Any and all ideas are welcome. I pieced this current code based on various articles I've found on the net. I'm a newbie.....so bear with me.

[AttackRabbit]

well, first off i might try setting the stage focus to your loaded .swf. Sometimes that helps. Question :

Is there any particular reason why you are assigning mousevents to children of a loaded swf ? I would maybe remove the event listeners from the parent class, and add some code to the loaded swf. Just dont add the listeners in the loaded swf until the stage added method is executed. It might be that scope is wrong ,the events might not be bubbling to the correct targets , or the actionscript is somehow being overwritten upon load.

[Troop]

Thanks for the quick response AttackRabbit. As far as movements...are you referring to the x and y positioning variables? I wanted the child movies to load on top of my main swf in a particular location. I was under the impression those were needed.

I had tried loading to external swf's to the "stage" by adding stage to the addChild code.... stage.addChild(_swfcontent). It didn't make a difference...but then again..I might have been missing some other key elements. Again....I'm a newbie.

I originally had the event listeners on the loaded swf...........the problem I ran in to....was I couldn't get the already loaded default swf off the stage when the new ones loaded. They would load properly.........but layered on top of the default one. If I could simply add the event listeners to the loaded swf...and refer back to the universal button function in the main swf (btnClickMain)...that would be great!!! But I couldn't figure out how to get the code to point to the parent function properly.

I read about making the code a public function..........then ran into issues as far as not having it within a package...and so on..and so on.

Question: How would you add an event listener....and have it use variables declared in the parent movie? .......without having to re-declare all the variables again in the loaded swf?

[Troop]

Ok.......based on the following article .....I revamped my coding...and was able to accomplish what I was looking for. Here's what my working code looks like:

//////MAIN FILE CODE

stop();

function changeMovies(nextMovie:String):void {

removeChildAt(this.numChildren-1);
loadMovie(nextMovie);
}

function loadMovie(nextMovie:String){
var Xpos:Number=18;
var YPos:Number=10;
var loader:Loader=new Loader();
var defaultSWF:URL Request=new URLRequest(nextMovie);

loader.load(defaultSWF);
loader.x=Xpos;
loader.y=Ypos;
addChild(loader);
}

loadMovie("sub.swf");



/////CODE WITHIN SUB.SWF

stop();

function btnClickSWF(event:MouseEvent):void {

MovieClip(this.parent.parent).changeMovies(event.t arget.name);
}

media.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, btnClickSWF);

/////////////////////////////////////////


Thanks to all.......especially the participants of the thread which helped me.

[AttackRabbit]

glad to hear you resolved your issue. what i meant was , that by loading an external swf, and adding functionality to movieclips inside that , swf , and using things like , .parent.parent , the object oriented benefits of as3 are kinda lost. Encapsulation is designed to make issues like these easier , so rather then loading a swf , with some movieclips that do nothing, actually write the inteface code inside of the sub swf, and use the event dispatcher , with bubbling phase set to true, to communicat to your parent movie. also setting the stage focus can be done by importing the Stage package and saying something like ,

Stage.focus = myClipMC.