Can't Access MovieClips and Functions in Loaded SWF

Question

Hi everybody,
I'm trying to simply access anything inside this loaded SWF and all I get is 'null'.
I have code in the parent SWF that needs to tell the child SWF movieclip what to do but nothing works. This was a piee of cake in AS2 and I can't seem to get anything to crossover in AS3.
Here's my code:
import com.greensock.TweenMax;
import flash.display.MovieClip;
var myLoader:Loader = new Loader();
var url:URLRequest = new URLRequest("SWCS_S3_500x250_exp_panel_2.swf"); // in this case both SWFs are in the same folder
myLoader.load(url);  // load the SWF file
panel2.addChild(myLoader);   // add that instance to the display list, adding it to the Stage at 0,0
panel2 = myLoader.content as MovieClip;
photo_about.alpha = 0;
photo_downloads.alpha = 0;
//panel2.content_about.alpha = 0;
//panel2.content_downloads.alpha = 0;
function closeSection():void
          panel2.controlsMC.forcePause();
          TweenMax.to(photo_about, .5, {alpha:0});
          TweenMax.to(photo_downloads, .5, {alpha:0});
          TweenMax.to(photo_home, .5, {alpha:0});
          TweenMax.to(panel2.content_about, .5, {alpha:0});
          TweenMax.to(panel2.content_downloads, .5, {alpha:0});
          TweenMax.to(panel2.controlsMC, .5, {autoAlpha:0});
          TweenMax.to(panel2.content_home, .5, {alpha:0});
panel2 traces null and all the clips loaded within pull up undefined property errors.
Can somebody please tell me what I'm doing wrong? I'd be stoked to know what I'm missing and feel like this should be a piece of cake.
Thanks for any help!

Answer 1

You are not adding the content to the stage at 0,0, you are adding it to panel2 at 0,0.  THen you take panel2 and assign it to be something that likely doesn't exist by the time you assign it.  You need to wait until the loader completes loading before you attempt to do anything with its content, otherwise it has no content (null).  Similarly, you cannot control anything in the loaded swf until it has finished loading.  So assign an event listener to the contentLoaderInfo property of the Loader to determine when loading is complete, and have the event handler function deal with starting the interaction with it.
var myLoader:Loader = new Loader();
var url:URLRequest = new URLRequest("SWCS_S3_500x250_exp_panel_2.swf");
myLoader.contentLoaderInfo.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, processLoadedSWF);
myLoader.load(url);
function processLoadedSWF(evt:Event):void {
    // deal with the loaded swf here
    // but you don't want to be assigning it to the panel2 object that contains the loader
As far as controlling anything inside the swf you load, is it an AS1/2 or an AS3 swf?