Hello to all of the Flash Community...

If I can just explain my dilemma...

I am a final year combined honours student at university. Because I was totally new to Web design and did not know a singly thing about the subject I decided to learn about this area for my final year dissatation.

Well I am designing a Flash 5 website for a fictitous computer supplies company. I have picked up Flash pretty quickly but there are a few things I am having problems with. It would be greatly appreciated if anyone out there can help a student in distress!!

Basically I have developed a simple database in Microsoft Access which has tables containing various computer components, eg. motherboards, cpu, monitors, etc.

The front-end of the site is using Flash, middleware is ColdFusion and back-end is Access.

Problem I am having is how to make Flash Communicate effectively with ColdFusion. I have developed simple ColdFusion scripts which query the database and return the make and model of each component in a given table. The query also returns how many records have been retrieved from the database. I have also developed a component which calls the ColdFusion query in a flash movie. But once it is called up I cannot return back to the previous page.

But it doesn't do exactly what I want it to do. I need to be able to do the following:

A Web page has been designed which displays buttons: each button is for a different component, eg.Motherboards, Memory, CPU, etc. When the user clicks on a button, eg. 'Monitors' it should tell ColdFusion to communicate with the database and then return all the 'monitors' in the flash web page. It would also help if these items were selectable so a user could select a number of items which could then be processed on an order form.

I guess this is quite a lot to ask for? But I am in desperate need for some help in this matter - the deadline for my dissatation is the 10th of May!!!

Also I have implemented an animated image which I want to use as an e-mail link for the Website. How do I turn this animated image into a mailto link? (so that if it is clcked, it opens up a pre-addressed e-mail).

Thanks for your time, and I hope that someone out there can help me...