Actionscript/Javascript Hide Movie Clip with Buttons

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October 12th, 2006, 10:03 AM

bocmaxima

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Actionscript/Javascript Hide Movie Clip with Buttons

Hi all, and thanks for reading.
I have an embedded Flash movie which I'm manipulating with JavaScript.
I basically want to hide certain "layers" which have essentially become groups of symbols in an embedded movie clip. The goal is to hide everything, which worked well using the Alpha property when the symbols in the movie clip were just graphics, but, now that I'm converting them to buttons to add interactivity, it's become problematic: the buttons, although invisible, are still active.
Is there some way that I can just outright hide or turn off the movie clip or make each button in that movie clip inactive (without using a for loop) so that these buttons will disappear?
Putting an invisible rectangle over it is not an option, as there are many different "layers" and possible combinations that would make it impractical.

Thanks in advance.

October 12th, 2006, 10:13 AM

b3n

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All symbol objects have an attribute called _visible. You can set that to false to hide something. It's less CPU-intensive than _alpha. I think it also disables the symbol.

Some objects also have an enabled attribute.

Disabling a movie clip doesn't disable the objects inside it - you have to disable each object individually.

Why don't you want to use a for loop?

Here is a recursive function that can disable objects. It was started by me and finished by 'blockage' at www.actionscript.org

Code:

function disable(scope:Object, stack:Array):Void
{
	// create a stack to avoid circular references
	if (!stack) var stack:Array = [];
	
	trace ("SCOPE: "+scope);
	
	var j:Number;
	var i:String;
	var circular:Boolean;
	for (i in scope)
	{ 
		if (typeof (scope[i]) == "movieclip")
		{ 
			// search the stack to make sure we not looking at a circular reference to an anscestor movieclip
			circular = false;
			j = stack.length;
			while (j--) {
				if (scope[i] === stack[j]) {
					circular = true;
					break;
				}
			}
			
			// avoid any anscestors
			if (!circular) {
				trace("scope[name] = "+scope[i]);
				trace("I have a movie clip child named "+i);
				trace("Disabling: "+scope[i]);
				scope[i].enabled = false;
				
				// add this clip to the stack 
				stack.push(scope[i]);
				
				// recurse down the branch
				disable(scope[i], stack);
				
				// done this branch so pop the stack
				stack.pop();
			}
		} 
		else if (typeof(scope[i]) == "object")
		{
			if (scope[i].enabled)
			{
				scope[i].enabled = false;
			}
		}
	}
}
disable(this);
// if called from main timeline, the entire movie will be disabled!

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Last edited by b3n : October 12th, 2006 at 10:29 AM.

October 12th, 2006, 10:18 AM