Mediaplayback object event listeners

Question

Folks,
I'm new to using Flash and its actionscript. I'm using the
Flash MX version. I'm working on an audio project that involves
timestamped metadata associated with the audio. So I'm creating
links in a web page to allow someone to jump to and play audio that
is identified based on the associated metadata. So I've got an html
page that contains Javascript with the SetVariable function being
used to pass variables to a Flash file, which is working because I
have the text variables defined on the stage and I can see the data
values have changed.
In the Flash file I've got a mediaplayback component
(myMedia) defined along with the text variables that Javascript
sets values for: playMe, startTime, stopTime, audioFile. In
addition, I've defined a traceOutput text variable to use for
debugging.
I'm not familiar with event based programming, but I've been
looking at the Flash on-line documentation as well as the AS for
Flash MX definitive guide book. I've written some AS in my first
frame of the only layer in the timeline to check for when a text
variable has changed to indicate that the mediaplayback component
should do things (see below). Of course nothing is working. Could
someone please give me an idea if I'm completely off in what I'm
trying to do? (Which by the way is to just have the media play
within the timestamp block associated with the content that someone
wants to listen to. The idea is to create a player that loads the
media just once and allows for Javascript to update the player each
time the same media file is referenced without reloading it.
Presently we have solutions for playing the audio without using
Flash, but in those, a 20Meg MP3 files is reloaded each time a link
to it is clicked and I'd like to eliminate the repeated downloads
of the same file when possible to improve response time when
clicking on the links.)
Thanks in advance,
Jack

Answer 1

This is probably because you have no way to listen to that
event until you finish creating it.
Specifically, assuming your TestPanel is in TestPanel.mxml,
somewhere else you must have:
<MyViews:TestPanel id="tp" />
And then you must also be doing:
tp.addEventListener("EventTest", onEventTest);
My assumtion is that a) you aren't adding the listener to the
tp at all, or b) that there is no way to add a listener until
initialzation is complete.
You can easily (quick and dirty) resolve this by using
this.parentApplication.dispatchEvent("EventTest") in your test()
method, and
this.parentApplication.addEventListener("EventTest,
"onEventTest");
in your catching view. Otherwise you will need to create a
Custom event that exists outside of either the panel or the parent,
and use that for dispatch/listening.
(You could also do it like this.addEventListener and
this.parent.dispatchEvent(..) in test().)