How to add buttons with links to different pages in my flash document?

Question

Hi I created a template for my flash animation which is a simple content box and a scroll bar beside it.. Anyway at the top I also have 3 pages (they are currently just part of the png background image so they are not buttons of any sort).. My question is how can I make links to these different pages so when clicked in the flash animation they will just open normally like they would in like a website..
I am a flash beginner so I'm not too technical with it... I don't know if I would have to create 3 seperate documents for my 3 pages or something else?
Thanks!

Answer 1

Do you expect the loaded SWF to load "into" the SWF that contains the buttons or are you expecting it to overwrite the existing SWF you're already in (similar to a web page)?
Loading a SWF inside is pretty straight forward, as long as the SWF is on the same domain or the domain you're loading from has a crossdomain.xml policy allowing it and the SWF is set to publish with the networking sandbox:
import flash.display.Loader;
import flash.net.URLRequest; 
import flash.events.Event;
var myLoader:Loader = new Loader();
// listen for completion
myLoader.contentLoaderInfo.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, handleCompleteF);
// usually add some IOErrorEvent or SecurityErrorEvent handlers here
// button hook here
myButtonInstanceName.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, loadPageF);
function loadPageF(e:MouseEvent):void
     // try to load
     try
          myLoader.load(new URLRequest('another.swf'));
     catch (e:*)
          // catch any error, trace it to flash IDE for debugging
          trace("Error loading SWF: " + e);
function handleCompleteF(e:Event):void
     // success, add to display list
     addChild(myLoader);
Season to taste, like moving the position of the Loader object. The Loader will contain the SWF in the .content property (e.g. myLoader.content) and is a display object so you can just add it directly to the display list.
If you add a second button you can re-use the myLoader to .load() a different SWF, just point it to a new function. You could re-use the same function but you'd need to detect the different buttons (possibly via the .name property). I presume you might want to do "different things" when different pages are loaded so I'm assuming you'd probably use a different function rather than make a huge reused branching function.
More info on Loader with sample code here:
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/reference/actionscript/3/flash/display/Loader.ht ml#includeExamplesSummary