How can I animate an MC's alpha property with actionscript? I want to click a
button and have an MC fade out without using a tween.

Also, How can I add a delay in the script so that I could have a series of MCs
fade out one after another when the button is clicked.

Thanks

on the button which will fade out the mc.

on (release) {
this.onEnterFrame=function() {
if (_root.mcname._alpha>0) {
_root.mcname._alpha -= 1; // change the number according to how fast you want
it to fade //
}
};
}

for a series of fades, loop through an array of your
movieclip instance names, this example duplicates
a movieclip instance - circ, adds its newname to the
array and loops through, fading and removing clips
until the array length is met, the onEnterFrame is
then deleted to unburden the cpu.
I hope this gives you some ideas,

function dup(clip,amount,inc,val){
aClips = [];
for(var j=0;j<=amount;j++){
duplicateMovieClip(clip,clip+j,j);
rClip = this[clip+j];
rClip._x =(j*20)+15;
rClip._alpha = 100;
aClips[j] = rClip;
aClips[j].onPress = function(){ fadeDown(0,inc,val); };
}
};

function fadeDown(a,b,c){
this.onEnterFrame = function(){
aClips[a]._alpha >= 0 ? aClips[a]._alpha -= b : aClips[a].removeMovieClip();
aClips[a]._alpha <= c ? a++ : null;
aClips[a-1]._alpha <= c ? aClips[a-1]._alpha -= b : null;
a == aClips.length ? aClips[aClips.length-1]._alpha = 0 : null;
a == aClips.length ? delete this.onEnterFrame : null;
}
};

targ = "circ";
dup(targ,25,20,20);

couldn't I use an interval to keep calling a function that looks to see if the
first MC's alpha is 0, before changing the alpha of the second MC? I tried this
code and it's not working. Am I doing something wrong?

on (release) {
this.onEnterFrame = function() {
_root.MC1._alpha -= 5;
myInterval = setInterval (fader, 10);
function fader() {
if(_root.MC1._alpha == 0) {
_root.MC2._alpha -= 5;
clearInterval(myInterval);
};
};
};
}