Sticky popup menus (on mouse out)

[porpentine]

Hi,
I have a series of buttons(movie clip), each of which pops up a secondary menu when you roll over, and hides it again when you roll out. I used a big hidden button (hit frame only) to return the movie to frame 1 on roll out.

When I view the swf, these buttons work most of the time, but if I keep mousing around they "stick" erratically, leaving the secondary menu showing. This doesn't happen every time, but if you mouse over fast it inevitably starts to happen.

Is there any way to ensure that those @#$%s hide and stay hidden when you roll out? Thanks for any tips...

Gordon

 

[oldnewbie]

Old problem Dave & I encountered a while back!
The only work around I have found, is to use reverse play or with a hit test force your popup, sliding or whatever secondary menu to close up on roll out!
Something in the line of this:

http://odin.prohosting.com/~oldnew/virtbuttons3.html

Try tripping this one!

ldnewbie
Hope that this
was helpful!

 

[coldfused]

you know i never got that fla...atleast i think not..

carlsatterwhite@endangeredgraphics.com

 

[porpentine]

I think I have the answer now!

First of all, thanks to oldnewbie for responding to my question. I went to the example you mentioned and was impressed by it, but didn't know how to recreate the parts of it that might be useful in my situation.

I found an alternative solution in the book Flash 5 Graphics, Animation and Interactivity by J. Mohler. Essentially, you have to create an invisible button (he refers to it as an 'Off Trigger') the size of the entire stage and assign the hide menu action. (in my case, this was an instruction to goto frame 1 on mouseover, frame 1 being the initial, hidden state for the menu button)

In effect, the whole time anybody rolls over any part of the stage the command to hide the menus is being invoked, until they roll over one of the popup menu buttons, which are on layers above the giant hit button.
These buttons override the giant hit frame as long as you stay within their bounds.

At least this is how I understand it. It seems to work pretty well. It still occasionally sticks momentarily, but only very briefly, and then it hides it. I think this may be due to a brief lag in Flash's response to rollovers. In any case, it's acceptable to me now. I hope this helps someone else who runs into this problem...

Gordon