Hi everyone. Bit of a Flash newbie here, I have used it quite extensively but
just as a keyframe navigation tool. Trying to put together a series of
instructional tutorials.

Having trouble grasping the whole 'Nesting' concept in Flash. (sample below)

http://www.hbxcontrols.com/index_tester.htm

I built the navigation for this training thing in a movie clip so that I could
drop the whole thing into new scenes without having a buzillion things going on
on the timeline.

What I am having trouble with is getting the sub-menu buttons to link to frame
markers on the main timeline for starters, and then ideally to be able to have
these sub-menu buttons guide the user from scene to scene.

This is the code that I have on the button, within the movie clip (which does
not seem to give me any results):

on (release){
_root.instanceOne.gotoandplay("test");
}

instanceOne = the instance name of the movie clip
test = the frame marker on the main timeline I wish the button to navigate to

Not sure what I am missing here, do I need to be referencing the instance of
the button within the movie clip or just the movie clip itself? How do I get
the button to direct to a seperate scene?

Thanks in advance.

On which timeline is the frame label "test"? On the main timeline of the swf
(on _root) or within the movie clip instanceOne?
Your code is assuming the latter, but you say you are trying to reference the
main timeline.

What I am having trouble with is getting the sub-menu buttons to link to frame
markers on the main timeline for starters

So try using:

on (release){
_root.gotoandplay("test");
}

The "test" marker is indeed on the main timeline, sorry my mistake.

I am wondering if my whole concept is flawed. My initial thinking was to have
the main timeline as the navigation center, and then each tutorial would be a
seperate scene. Does this mean that the whole thing will load each time someone
wants to do a single tutorial?

Would it be better to have each tutorial as a seperate .swf file which gets
opened or possibly loaded into a target box?
Apologies if this makes little to no sense.

It would be far better to load each tutorial as a separate swf file, rather
than load (possibly) unwanted tutorials as scenes.

You are also going down the right track using a "container" clip on the main
timeline to hold the swfs!

Thanks yachts,
I've got the buttons setup now to load a movie clip as opposed to linking to a
scene. I haven't figured out the "container box" but what I did do was build
the loading .swf files to the same size as the original so that I can just
place them where a "container box" would be.
Thanks again.