Hi there, I am going to build flash chat .... so I need some help ...

The most stable way would be with Flash Comm. Server to control traffic, but I can see Flash Remoting with J2EE doing what's needed as well.

I'm fairly new to Flash. I need help!!! I want to build an animation that
start witha black screen and then a spotlight appears to reveal the image
underneath. So I built a mask. I then want the spotlight to move along a path
so I tried to build a guide layer, etc and I can't get it to work. How do I
build an animation that has a spotlight moving on a path. I can only get it to
one or the other at this point; either a mask or a guided tween. HELP!!! I'm
running out of time to get this done. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

I'd recommend starting a new thread.

But your problem is a simple one to solve: Remember, you don't need to use
tweens to make an animation. Use normal motion tweening as much as you can,
but frame by frame is another way to do it.

But if you need to use both a guide path and a mask, create a movieclip
symbol. And inside that mc create your guide path and tween layers as normal.
Then drop that movieclip onto your stage into a new layer. That layer will be
your mask layer.

Thank you so much for the reply. I tried it out today and it worked great. (t he movie clip method.) My headache is over! I appreciate your help.