flash actionscript: I can not figure out how to make a progress bar like the kind between pages when the second one is loading . I have tried what i think will work but to no avail

I am new at flash

in general, you can create a movieclip (with instance name progressBar) that
contains a rectangle (with both stroke and fill) and its left edge at
stage-center.

right click on the fill, click convert to movieclip with its left edge at
stage-center. give the fill an instance name (say fillMC).

you can now control your progress bar by assigning progressBar.fill._xscale to
equal thePageYourLoadingTarget.bytesLoaded()*100/bytesTotal().

Hi, here is a great flash video-tuturial site: www.gotoandlearn.com
explaining you how to create
flash preloader and much more.

Check out these three tutorials:

Basic Flash Preloader
Advanced Flash Proloader
External SWF Preloading

Hope that helps.
R.