MouseOver Change Layers?

Question

Greetings!
I have been tasked to create banner that has four mouseover areas. The main body of the banner--which includes hyperlinks--and the background of the entire banner must change as the user mouses over the four areas. See the diagrams at the following link (it is not working properly):
http://www.miklas.org/forum_questions/mouseover_question.htm
I attempted to complete this task as follows, but it really isn't behaving properly. I created a layer of buttons and text, and set the alpha levels to 0 for the "over" state of each button. I then created four separate layers containing the appropriate content. When the user mouses over a button on the left, the proper layer would be displayed. I planned to use Actionscript to accomplish this; pseudocode here:
IF button1.mouseover == true THEN { display layer1, hide layers 2, 3, and 4 }
IF button2.mouseover == true THEN { display layer2, hide layers 1, 3, and 4 }
IF button3.mouseover == true THEN { display layer3, hide layers 1, 2, and 4 }
IF button4.mouseover == true THEN { display layer4, hide layers 1, 2, and 3 }
The problem is that when the user mouses away, the content disappears. Once the user mouses over a mouseover area, I want the content on the right to stay viewable.
Is this the correct way to proceed? Any suggestions? I'm new to Flash, but not new to programming, so I may not be thinking about htis propoerly.
Thanks for your help!

Answer 1

you can't control layers with actionscript.  you'll need to convert each object in a layer you want to control into a movieclip.  you can then control the _visible properties of your movieclips.
you don't need to use an if-statement to check from mouse-overs.  assign your buttons instance names and use code similar to:
button1.onRollOver=function(){
// do whatever.  say:
mc._visible = true;
button1.onRollOut=function(){
mc._visible = false;