Creating an animated button with a MovieClip.

Have you ever seen a flash button that have transitions between RollOver and RollOut? Well, this thing is done by creating an animated movieclip with a little bit of actionscript:

  1. First, create a movieclip, and inside create your button design: a square shape with a text field or anything you want.
  2. Edit this movie clip.
  3. Create an animation with your shape and text inside this movie clip.
  4. Then, insert a new layer in this movie clip, and insert this ActionScript in the first frame
    
    //all this code is inside the complex button so you can stick as many as you want
    //on the stage and all will work.. they all will have this code in it..
    
    stop(); // stop the movie clip from playing (stop button from growing, we want that when the mouse rolls over only
    
    this.onEnterFrame = function(){
    	if(rewind == true){   //if rewind switch is set to true play backwards
    		prevFrame();        // play backwards
    	}
    }
    
    this.onRollOver = function(){
    	rewind = false; //set variable (or switch) that decides wether ot not to play backwards...
    	play();    // play this movie clip.. (grow the button(tween));
    }
    
    this.onRollOut = function(){
    	rewind = true;    //set or rewind switch to true so it will play backwards...
    }
    

  5. Now create a Keyframe at the end of the animation in this Layer, and insert a stop(); in the Actionscript panel.
  6. And finally, save the document, publish it, and test it!

And here are the source files:

Flash 9 ActionScript 2 file: mclip.fla

Swf File: mclip1.swf

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