CS4, AS3 Buttons only work once

Hi,
I am trying to be good and move to AS3.
I had all of my code working, then I moved all of my main movie timeline into a movie clip (body_mc)

Main movie now has 1 frame.

My body_mc has a navigation menu, one button is portfolio_bttn which takes you to that frame label. It persists through all frames of body_mc. This button works fine.

I seem to have everything working except 4 buttons on the first frame of body_mc. They should all perform exactly the same function as portfolio_bttn. They exist only in frame 1.

They work the first time you click one (any one).
Navigate back to frame one of body_mc and all 4 buttons will no longer work. What am I doing wrong??


here is my code which is in frame 1 of the main timeline

Code:

---


body_mc.portfolio_bttn.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, clickPortfolio);

function clickPortfolio(event:MouseEvent):void {
          body_mc.gotoAndStop("portfolio");   
}
//the 4 buttons making trouble
body_mc.homeVid1_bttn.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, clickPortfolio);
body_mc.homeVid2_bttn.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, clickPortfolio);
body_mc.homeVid3_bttn.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, clickPortfolio);
body_mc.homeVid4_bttn.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, clickPortfolio);

---

thanks for any help
mark

Do you have this code on a single frame somewhere?

Yes all of my code is on frame 1 of the main timeline, which is only 1 frame long.
The only other thing in frame 1 at the moment is body_mc, which contains everything esle.
thanks

Would you be able to post your FLA file? Or an example FLA that does the same thing so we can see what your doing?

Hi,
it is a layout mockup to show a client. So it consisted of png's from photoshop with minimal functionality.

made for a nasty file size to post. so I stripped it down to just the smallest number of buttons and some comments.

saved it back to CS3 just in case, far back as I can go.

thanks heaps
mark

Bump
no answer yet
please check out the attached file

Whats happening is when your body_mc goes to frame 2, it clears out those listeners because the objects are removed from the stage at that point, then re-added when you back to frame 1 in body_mc. One frame 1 though, you are not re-adding the listeners.

I made the proper change for you.

Hi,
thanks!!
I understand your explanation and solution and it works for me.

I was wondering though, there is a movement to the idea of having all of your actionscript in 1 place. Is there a way this could be achieved from frame 1 of the main timeline?
Thanks again
Mark

Yes there is, but you would have to take a complete different approach with your structure of the timeline.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by sstalder

Whats happening is when your body_mc goes to frame 2, it clears out those listeners because the objects are removed from the stage at that point, then re-added when you back to frame 1 in body_mc. One frame 1 though, you are not re-adding the listeners.

I made the proper change for you.

---

Hey guys,

I realise this thread is a wee bit old but it's the only one I could find that pertains to my problem! I seem to be having the exact same issue. The solution to the above problem wasn't actually written here (bummer for me!) but I'm hoping someone can provide me with it.

I have a simple website with a menu bar containing 6 links. One of the links is a drop-down menu with another link inside. Everything displays properly (the drop-down animation etc.) but the link inside the drop-down only works if you click it:

1) first
2) directly after the home button (first link in the timeline) having first clicked another link in the menu - hope that makes sense?

I'm sure the problem is only a small AS3 error but because I'm very new to it, I need help to fix it!

Please help me if you can! (.fla attached)


Many thanks,


Jez.

Ya- I'm having issue with my buttons only working once. How about that example file that sstalder fixed up. I would like to get a look at that....

I probably removed the sample to free up space on my profile. Chalz are you able to post your own sample that is not working then I can take a look at it?

Thanks sstadler- I figured it out. I was trying to put all my script code on one keyframe as this seems like the recommended way to go. The movie had the ability to skip that keyframe and I was trying to load instances that were not set in the movie yet at the first frame. Once I distributed my scripts out over the time line so they showed up when they were being used it all worked fine. It seems messy, but it works...

hi guys i realise this thread is pretty old but I am having the same problem with the buttons only working once and I cannot understand how to fix it. As above I have all of the actionscript for the homepage on the first frame, and all of the buttons work fine the first time, but once I have navigated back they stop working. The strangest thing about this is that when i replace the buttons with ones drawn with the paintbrush they work continuously. How do I go about changing where my actionscript is to fix this?

thanks in advance,

can you post a simple file with just the problem stuff for us to look at?

it wont let me upload it to here for some reason so ive hosted it here

This is a recreaton of what is going wrong with one of the buttons

Got your file from the link,
have to go out to see client for a bit
I will check it out and fix it in a few hours, so just forget it and move on to something else.
Reason it would not let you upload here is size, I think the limit is 300k
Mark

i really appreciate that man

This is a little goofy, but the error shows up because Other_btn gets removed in the timeline. When you click it, you go to a later frame (and other_btn ceases to exist).
When a different button takes you back to frame 1, the first line in the actions layer adds an event listener to Other_btn. Other_btn doesn’t have time to initialize since it was deleted from the timeline. (basically the code executes faster than flash can add the button back to the stage)

Yes, it’s a strange thing, but that’s why timeline code can get dicey.

A better solution is to set the visible property. Like Other_btn.visible = false; Hide and show the navigation when it’s appropriate.

if you plan on having a lot of buttons this could get a bit unwieldy. You could add and remove buttons with the code. If you need a slicker solution for more buttons let me know and we can plan something.

file is attached using visible