OT: Flash Help

jrazz wrote on 2/22/2008, 8:22 PM
I am working on a website for a company and ran into a problem. I did something to cause a blue overlay with a red outline to appear once you click on any tab after the home page is displayed. I can't locate it and have no idea how I did it. Would anyone with experience with Flash know how to get rid of this? I searched for it in the library pane, I tried to select everything on the page, I tried selecting different points on the timeline that show the alternate pages and no luck finding this overlay. You can see it doesn't affect anything as you can select right through it. I just don't know where it is at or how to access it in Flash CS3.

Here is the link. Remember, click on one of the tabs to see it (as it does not show up initially on the home page).

j razz

Comments

Jim H wrote on 2/23/2008, 1:17 AM
That's a strange thing... I'll send the link to my son the Computer Engineer....

Nice looking site.
deusx wrote on 2/23/2008, 4:20 AM
looks like it's supposed to be a mask layer.

You'll have to find it, and right click on the layer containing this rectangle, and check mask.

That is unless it was dynamically created, then it's hard to say without seeing what's going on. Did you do this from scratch, or was it something you inherited from somebody else?
Norm Chan wrote on 2/23/2008, 7:20 AM
Just a wild guess, is there a chance that it comes from the CSS Stylesheet that the html document points to?
jrazz wrote on 2/23/2008, 7:56 AM
Well, I know it is not the CSS as the phantom object is inside the swf file. I think it has to do with the transition effect that occurs each time you click on a menu tab. That is why it doesn't appear until after a tab is clicked. So I have been looking around the scripts in those animations and have found nothing. I have another guy looking at the source file to see what he can find.

This was built from a template they bought some time ago. Funny thing how favors/bartering work in the business world.

j razz
deusx wrote on 2/23/2008, 8:03 AM
I'm 99.9999% sure it's a mask, that for some reason is now showing.

Maybe you accidentally clicked on a layer and unmasked it?

Try exporting for a different version of a player ( 6,7,8 ). Maybe it's an older .flv that has problems if you export to flash9, and it was originally written for flash 7, could be that too.

Look for actions on buttons, what does it say, where does it send the timeline after you click on it, then locate that, and in there you should be able to find this blue rectangle.
rmack350 wrote on 2/23/2008, 12:07 PM
Hmm. All that sounds reasonable. Some other observations...

As deusx says, it occurs with the wipe transition. It also seems to be under the wipe, because it disappears everywhere the wipe is yet stays visible over on the left where the wipe doesn't cover it.

If you watch it during the wipe, it seems like it's affected by the same effect that brightens the text, even in that area on the left that the wipe doesn't cover. In fact, the first

It doesn't appear after the very first wipe that happens when the page loads, which makes me think it's not part of the wipe MC. Flash has a bunch of ways to search for things in the file so you might try the various find or movie explorer tools. More likely it's part of the text area because it shares the same effect.

Looks like a mask made visible, don't see a reason for it to be there, there's probably some bit of code running when the page first loads that doesn't run when the buttons are pressed or the text areas are reloaded. if the text areas are separate swfs maybe I'd back one up and put an empty swf of the same name in it's place just to try to narrow it down.

Rob
jrazz wrote on 2/23/2008, 7:09 PM
I got it. I had to remove the contact movie clip and rebuild it. I never found the culprit, I just was able to pinpoint where it was at. So, once I found where it was, I deleted and rebuilt. Now it works fine. Thanks for the help and offers of help. Much appreciated.

j razz