hi gparis, thanks for your reply but actually what i had in mind (and with a bit of research i did the past day) i found out it was called lightbox. i downloaded it and found that i needed a modified one called flashlightbox. although the demo included wasn't too helpful... at all.

the action script that came with the demo didn't help with what i was trying to do. in my case, i have a set of thumbnails already inside the flash movie that are buttons. i want to be able to click the buttons that open the corresponding image in the lightbox.

the one in the demo doesn't explain how to layout the buttons in your own order (rather than using it's scattered polaroid photo frames layout) purely crazy!!!