Movie Clips As Containers

So far in this chapter, you’ve learned how to name your movie-clip objects, target each one, and navigate within their Timelines from any other Timeline in your movie. But how does the ability to control movie-clip Timelines translate into meaningful interactivity for your Flash project? The key is to think of movie clips as being containers that hold stuff: animation, graphics, sound, and even data. By moving the playhead back and forth or playing certain parts of a particular movie-clip Timeline, you can access that stuff whenever you want, independently of what else is going on (Figure 5.42).

Figure 5.42. The movie clip as a container. This movie clip has a stop action in the first keyframe. The other labeled keyframes can contain buttons, graphics, animations, or any other kind of Flash information, which you can access simply by targeting the movie clip and moving its playhead to the appropriate keyframe.