The basic building blocks of actions are these simple
commands:
Stop and Go
to
When you use Go to, you can specify if you want
the timeline to go to and play
or go to and stop at a certain
frame. This is done by double clicking Go To in the actions window
and then checking the box at the bottom Go to and Play. Uncheck
the box and the timeline will Go to and Stop.
Get URL
You can also have an action that opens up an HTML
page. When your timeline reaches a certain frame, for example,
you might want the Flash movie to jump over to a regular Web site.
Or maybe you want your user to click a button in order to jump
to a Web page. Either way, you can accomplish this using the Get
URL action.
Rollover these categories with your mouse. There
are several things going on here. Three buttons slide in from
the side. Each button plays a movie clip on rollover. On Release
of the button, the Get URL action is activated, opening a HTML
page.
You can download
this movie to see how the Get URL works in the example above.
Here is the timeline:
Here's how it works:
The three categories Learn
about Flash, Review the Class Calendar,
and Download Flash Movies as well
as Play Again are symbols that have
the property of Button. Buttons, like all symbols, can be tweened
and animated on the timeline.
When you convert your object to a symbol, select Button as the
behavior.
At the end of the animation in frame 30, there is
a stop action that stops the timeline from moving. From here,
users can click the buttons to open a Web page, or they can click
Play again to start over.
Step One:
Right-click on a button symbol on the stage and
select Actions to bring up the Actions Editor Window.
Step Two:
Double-click on On Mouse Event and make sure Release
it checked
Step Three:
Double-click on Get URL and in the URL field, type
the path to the HTML file you want to link to. This address can
be either absolute or relative. Relative is more flexible, allowing
you to move sites to different servers without disrupting the
links. But be careful when using relative links-- make sure your
paths are correct.
Note: You can also specify a target window with
the window pull down menu. If your site is designed in frames,
you can use this to target a link into a specific frame, i.e.
main or _blank
Step Four:
You have now set up the Get URL action. Now you
need to set your buttons up.
Right click on one of the button symbols on the
stage and select Edit in Place.
Step Five:
Now you will be inside the button symbol leanflash.
There are four states: up, over, down and hit, but only Up is
defined. You must insert keyframes into the other button states
to make them work. Click inside the frame Over and go to Insert-->Keyframe
and add a keyframe to each of the other states. This will duplicate
the contents of the Up state. You can then change the color of
the text in the over and down states to be triggered when the
mouse rolls over this symbol. In the example here, I added a movie
clip to the Over state, so when you roll over Learn about Flash,
a movie clip called learn-over plays the line "animation
and the web"
Here is the library
for the geturl file. We are working inside the button symbol
learnflash.
In the over state, drag an instance of the
mc learn-over onto the stage. Now when the mouse rolls over
this button, the over state will trigger a movie to be played.
Remember that movie clips will continually
loop. If you don't want the animation to keep looping on
your over state, you must add a stop action to the last
frame of the mc timeline.
The hit state is different from Up, Over, and Down.
It defines the area of the hotspot. The hit frame should contain
a keyframe that has a solid shape that defines the area of the
button. Here there is a keyframe in each of the four frames. The
Over has green type, the down has pink type, and the hit has a
large rectangle shape.
... But ...
If the hit spot is not defined like this in the
timeline, then the button will not work properly as in this case.
Here, the only hit area is the text itself. If you should click
inside the o of button, for example, the link will not work.:
... Or ...
If the hit spot is a duplicate of the Up state (and
not a solid shape) then the same thing will happen... you can
only click on the button if you put your mouse on a solid letter.
If you click in between the words, the link will not work.
That's it. Once you have added hit states to
all of your buttons, you're done!
Go on to Part III, 
