FC Image Gallery w/Scrolling Question

Question

This is probably the least of anyone's concern at this point, but in lieu of documentation and best practices, I thought I'd ask anyway.  Maybe someone from Adobe will be able to answer.  I think I've consumed every tutorial available on the internet and haven't come across this yet.
As far as I can tell variables aren't readily available in FC (although learning MXML may resolve that), so I'm not sure how to build this.
I'm trying to design a photo gallery, in which images can be scrolled, faded in-out, or something by clicking a NEXT and PREVIOUS button.
The problem is knowing which image is visible at any given point.
I've been able to accomplish this by creating a separate state for each image and then 'onclick' - transition to the next (or previous) state.  It's not working perfectly, the code generated automatically to perform the transition is slightly off and then when I go in to tweak it manually, I just make it worse.
What I'm wondering: is this the best way to do this or is there a simpler way?
OR am I trying to use FC inappropriately?  I initially saw FC as an alternative to learning Flash (I've been trying for months - seriously) but I'm realizing that FC's main purpose seems to be as an elevated design tool and Flash Builder is meant to inject functionality and add the FC design into the workflow.
Should we not view FC as an endpoint?

Answer 1

>>>using the onClick with the "when in " " state"
That's what I said I was currently doing, in my post.  What I was asking is, if that's the best way to accomplish it.  If I have 100 images and 100 transitions, it's going to get messy.
Creating separate transitions seems more like brute force rather than elegance and I can't imagine a programmer wanting to see all those transitions.
There's another way to 'almost' accomplish this with far less code by grouping all of the images and then 'moving' them in the timeline 'onClick', but there's the snag of not knowing where you are.  I hate to say it, but a hook into javascript might be useful.
As far as the 'slightly off' statement, I just meant that the product is a bit buggy and that's expected, so it caused me to wonder if I was even taking the right approach.  If it's the only approach then it's the right one, but I don't know, so's I'm askin.
As I was typing in my original post, it began to dawn on me that my view of FC may be skewed.  I mentioned that I was hoping FC would enable the individual user (e.g. freelancer) to develop UI's for real world use, without learning AS3, but that may not be the case at all.  If we need to learn Flash Builder to accomplish that, then I should probably get back to learning AS3.
I've been a programmer for 25 years, but AS3 has been kicking my butt for 6 months.  I'm trying to get away from programming to create art, but the programmer in me can't hand off the task off to someone else (much less be able to afford it.)
A boy can dream....