flash (macromedia): I'm having a lot of newbie troubles with my combobox. I'm trying to use a
combobox as a means of navigating to different nested slides. Here's what I
want: the user clicks on an item in the combobox, let's say "nebraska," and
that action calls forth the nebraska slide. If the user then clicks on "new
york," they will have called forth the new york slide. It seems like this
should be easy enough, but I haven't found any tutorials that help. Any
suggestions or links? Thanks for the help.

What you describe is easy enough but I am curious whether you want to continue
to use the built-in navigation features that come with the slide presentation
in addition to the combobox or you will disable the keyboard navigation and go
with the combobox only. The slide presentation builds a list of all slides in
their proper order into an array when the presentation loads and it remembers
within its own navigation scheme where it is at any time, where the 'next'
slide and 'previous' slides are as well as the first and last slides. If you go
jumping around with a combobox, it is not immediately compatible with the slide
navigation. Don't be dissuaded by that - you can script around almost anything
but it will help to know in advance how you plan to navigate your slides if you
want anything in addition to the combobox.

This is quick and dirty. It offers no transitions. It will not prevent you from
also using the keyboard navigation but it will not match the keyboard
navigation sequence (next and previous) to the combobox selections. It will
only target the slides you name in the combobox list. There are other ways but
they are more difficult. I don't use this presentation format so don't know
very much about it so, if there is a better solution, I apologize in advance.

//this script should go in the timeline of the main presentation slide and the
combobox should be
//placed on that slide as well. You can put it someplace else but would need
to adjust
//paths accordingly

//make a change handler for the combobox
jump2slide = new Object();
jump2slide.change = function (evt){
//make the slide just seen invisible
if(current_slide <> undefined) {
eval("this." + current_slide)._visible = 0;
}
//make the slide selected in the combobox visible
eval("this." + evt.target.selectedItem.data)._visible = 1;
//save the name of the slide just selected to be made invisible on next
selection
current_slide = evt.target.selectedItem.data;
}

//attach change handler to the combobox
mycombobox.addEventListener("change", jump2slide);

//populate the combobox with the names of your slides including the full path

mycombobox.addItem("my presentation slides","do nothing");
mycombobox.addItem("-----------------------","do nothing");
mycombobox.addItem("my first slide","slide1");
mycombobox.addItem("my second slide","slide2");
mycombobox.addItem("my third slide","slide2/slide3");
//for child slides, be sure to include the full path in the name

//make all slides in the mycombobox combobox invisible
//this may or may not be necessary but it won't do any harm

//you ccould also do this differently by searching for slide objects themselves
//but it takes some effort to find child slides so this is just easier

for(obj in mycombobox.dropdown.__dataProvider) {
if(mycombobox.dropdown.__dataProvider[obj]["data"] <> "do nothing") {
eval("this." + mycombobox.dropdown.__dataProvider[obj]["data"])._visible =
false;
}
}

Did I mention I'm a newbie with Flash? I'm getting a lot of errors. I think
it's because I'm not using the correct naming for the slides, etc, in this part
of the code you gave me:


//populate the combobox with the names of your slides including the full path

mycombobox.addItem("my presentation slides","do nothing");
mycombobox.addItem("-----------------------","do nothing");
mycombobox.addItem("my first slide","slide1");
mycombobox.addItem("my second slide","slide2");
mycombobox.addItem("my third slide","slide2/slide3");

A few questions:
When I have the combobox selected and I'm looking at the parameters for the
combobox, I should be seeing
data []
editable false
labels [Choose a state, Nebraska, New York]
row count [3]

Is that right?

Now, in the script, I should have something like this
mycombobox.addItem("Choose a state","do nothing");
mycombobox.addItem("-----------------------","do nothing");
mycombobox.addItem("Nebraska","nebraska");

with "Nebraska" being the title I've given the element in the labels
parameter, and "nebraska" being the title I've given the slide in the screens
window?

Lastly, I should be attaching the script to frame one of the actions layer, no?

You didn't have to mention that you were a newbie. If you were experienced, you
would not be using slides to begin with :) Not going necessarily in order:
Your conversion from the properties box to the timeline script is about right
assuming that the instance name of the combobox is actually 'mycombobox'. I
don't think you ever mentioned what the instance name was so I just put
something generic. Either name your combobox 'mycombobox' or replace the
'mycombobox' with the actual instance name. In the properties dialog, you have
the ability to enter in 'data' and 'label'. That is a horrendously bad way to
do it. It is much easier to populate the combobox either with addItem as I
wrote or with giving it a 'dataProvider'. No matter which way you choose to do
it, the end result is that the combobox is set up with an object array with the
objects 'label' and 'data' but that is way more information than any of us
really care about so forget I even said it. The reason I prefer not to use the
component inspector to enter the information is simply ease of maintenance.
Also, it may make it a bit clearer to think of it this way: example:
mycombobox.addItem('my first slide','slide1'); this adds 'my first slide' to
the label object in the next available slot in the array and adds 'slide1' to
its data object exactly the same as if you had entered it in the component
inspector. You could also write it this way with exactly the same result:
mycombobox.addItem({label:'my first slide',data:'slide1'}); It is not
necessary to do that but it may make it read a little more clearly. Just choose
whichever syntax you are happier with and stay with it. As far as the slide
names, these are the names as they appear in the white box to the left of the
stage (don't know what you call that box so I'll stick with the technical
naming convention of 'white box'). In the white box, you see thumbnails of all
your slides. To the right of each slide is its name. The default names are
'slide1', 'slide2', etc. but if you renamed them, you should use your names for
the data item of the combobox. For the slides under the 'main' or
'presentation' slide, you would just use the name of the slide in the combobox
data. If a slide has a child slide, you need to add its parent slide to the
pathname. Say you have three slides: 'Nebraska', 'Colorado' and 'Arkansas'.
mycombobox.addItem('my Arkansas slide','Arkansas');//the label can be anything
you want but the data has to be exact mycombobox.addItem('my Colorado
slide','Colorado'); mycombobox.addItem('my Nebraska slide','Nebraska'); note:
'exact' means exactly that including proper case of all letters - 'Nebraska'
does not equal 'nebraska' in the data item Now let's say that you want a child
slide for 'interestingplaces' for each state. Nebraska has a child slide named
'interestingplaces' and so does Colorado. Since they are children of other
slides, the parents need to be in the path. mycombobox.addItem('my Arkansas
slide','Arkansas'); mycombobox.addItem('my Colorado slide','Colorado');
mycombobox.addItem('Colorado sites of
interest','Colorado/interestingplaces');//parent slide included in the path
mycombobox.addItem('my Nebraska slide','Nebraska');
mycombobox.addItem('Nebraskasites of interest','Nebraska/interestingplaces');
Don't try to put interesting places for Arkansas because it will returned
'undefined'. Even Flash knows there are no interesting places in Arkansas (I'm
from there so I can say that). All that combobox script needs to go in a
keyframe on the timeline at the point where the combobox exists. Since you are
using the slides format, you should place the combobox on the main presentation
screen and the script on the timelime of the main presentation screen. If you
get errors, can you mention specifically what errors you are getting?