Novice Navigation Woes

Question

Hey All! I am having a doozy here . . . pulling my hair out
and wearing sack cloth and ashes . . . can anyone drop me a line?
I am trying to make this navigation scheme for a new site.
The .fla I am working in is the navigation.swf that will load into
the master.swf. There are a couple of things I could really use
some help with.
First of all, the buttons are movieclips with frame labels
and stop actions (up, down, press). I tried to use buttons . . .
but since you cannot access the button "states" in AS, I used movie
clips instead. (from browsing alot of forums, this seems to be the
system of choice, yes). all of the buttons have this code (with
different names) attached to them:
Actionscript:
on (rollOver) {
this.artMC.gotoAndPlay("down");
on (rollOut) {
this.artMC.gotoAndPlay("up");
on (press) {
this.artMC.gotoAndPlay("press");
on (release) {
_root.reEnableOptions
this.enabled = false;
this.artMC.enabled = false;
this.artMC.gotoAndPlay("down");
<insert nonsequitor here> While I wanted to keep all of
my script in a centralized place (eg action layer, frame 1 of
timeline) . . . it seemed that everyone who wrote a tutorial had ya
attaching the script to the MC itself. and no matter how many times
I tried to
this.artMC.onRollOver = function() {
this.artBtn.artMC.gotoAndPlay("down");
it was NOT workin! (bonus points for if you can explain that
one to me!)</end nonsequitor>
Anyway, here is where my problem lies. You can see that my
GOAL is to have the button disabled when pressed and remain in the
DOWN state. in order to re-enable the button when another button is
released, I have created this function in the _root timeline, and
inserted it to run in each of the buttons.
Actionscript:
// ReEnable the sub-menu options
function reEnableOptions() {
this.aboutBtn.enabled = true;
this.aboutBtn.about.enabled = true;
this.aboutBtn.about.gotoAndPlay("up");
this.artBtn.enabled = true;
this.artBtn.artMC.enabled = true;
this.artBtn.artMC.gotoAndPlay("up");
this.archBtn.enabled = true;
this.archBtn.archMC.enabled = true;
this.archBtn.archMC.gotoAndPlay("up");
this.fashionBtn.enabled = true;
this.fashionBtn.fashionMC.enabled = true;
this.fashionBtn.fashionMC.gotoAndPlay("up");
this.photoBtn.enabled = true;
this.photoBtn.photoMC.enabled = true;
this.photoBtn.photoMC.gotoAndPlay("up");
this.webdesignBtn.enabled = true;
this.webdesignBtn.webdesignMC.enabled = true;
this.webdesignBtn.webdesignMC.gotoAndPlay("up");
this.miscBtn.enabled = true;
this.miscBtn.miscMC.enabled = true;
this.miscBtn.miscMC.gotoAndPlay("up");
clearly . . . this is NOT workin! grrrr! I think my code is
"sound" in idea . . . but I think I am missing something pretty
fundamental here . . . can anyone lead me in the right
direction?

Answer 1

ok . . . so I found out that my function on the root timeline
wasn't being called because I forgot to place the (); after the
_root.reEnableOptions
but I ran into more problems because this function isn't
setting all buttons to "up" . . . it is flipping all of them to the
opposite of what they are presently set at! (grrrrr!) . . . so I
thought I would try a modified version of your previousBtn
idea(which is brilliant!), due to the fact that I disable the movie
clip that reveals the button, and the movie clip inside with the
"button state" timeline. Here is what I came up with
on (rollOver) {
this.miscMC.gotoAndPlay("down");
on (rollOut) {
this.miscMC.gotoAndPlay("up");
on (press) {
this.miscMC.gotoAndPlay("press");
on (release) {
this.enabled = false;
this.miscMC.enabled = false;
this.miscMC.gotoAndPlay("down");
previousBtn.enabled = true;
previousBtn.gotoAndPlay("up");
previousBtn = this.miscMC;
previousMC.enabled = true;
previousMC = this;
for each button i changed the variable (eg this.miscMC would
become this.artMC for the nested art movieclip). When this didn't
work, I decided to try and get more specific and tried this:
on (release) {
this.enabled = false;
this.miscMC.enabled = false;
this.miscMC.gotoAndPlay("down");
previousBtn.enabled = true;
previousBtn.gotoAndPlay("up");
previousBtn = miscBtn.miscMC;
previousMC.enabled = true;
previousMC = this;
unfortunately, using a more specific entry didn't work either
. . . the buttons still do not re-enable, and they don't switch to
the "up" position . . .
I am wondering if I may have overcomplicated this in my
initial design . . . nesting the "button states" movie clip within
the movie clip that animates the button "fading in" to the scene .
. . should I be taking an entirely different approach? Any
tutorials/examples/suggestions out there?
Also, if you have the time kglad, wanna give me an example of
how to properly control those movieclip timelines from the actions
layer?