Flash Site Design - How to -

Question

I've been learning flash for the last month or so and now I'm
about to dig in. I need to create a site and slideshow that has
animated borders around a slideshow like this:
http://www.gretchenadams.com/
(enter site)
With then entry lines looking as though they are drawn on
should I be doing this by creating a movie clip of a drawn out
border and then masking, fading and keyframing the borders in? Or
should that be done with some actionscript trickery?
The actual resizing borders around the slideshow. Do I just
create 3 or so different borders and then is there a way to write a
script that recognizes the size of the photo and then adjusts the
border automaticly so that I can load the photos from xml. I'm
pretty sure that if I was creating a self contained slideshow I
could animate this all myself without some crazy actionscripts
(Aside from the basics) but since I need to load them from xml and
I need it to adjust itself to the size I'm not quite sure which way
I should be heading.
Thanks for your prompt attention : )

Answer 1

Don't shoot me for this...
I need to load this from xml. I wanted to load the sizes etc
via the xml but I couldn't figure out how to do all that.
I found a tutorial that teaches how to do the resizing
border. But it starts off by creating a border of any size, then
using a "UILoader" component. The tutorial teaches how to load the
files for this via an images folder one at a time but not as an xml
file. I've got about 24 pictures typed out in an xml file, a few
blank squares to act as thumbnail buttons on the stage but it says
to:
add mouse click event listener (load pic)
button mode true
function loadImage(whatever:MouseEvent):void
picLoader.source = "images/individual image.jpg";
Now I'm stuck at that last part. How can I get the first file
in the xml to be called out from there instead of the individual
jpg?
Here is the top part of the code that tested the xml itself:
var babyImages:XML;
var imageList:XMLList;
var loader:URLLoader = new URLLoader()
loader.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, onComplete);
loader.load(new URLRequest("slideshow.xml"));
function onComplete(d:Event):void
babyImages = new XML(loader.data);
imageList = imagesX.image;
trace(imageList);
Thanks for your prompt attention. I'm open to jumping ship on
this way and doing it the other if I could figure out how to put
the sizes properly into the xml and extract them in the
actionscript.