Scrolling picture gallery?

[Kristofer]

Hello! I´m a total newbie and I got help here more than a year ago, from Jeet I believe (thanks again!). Since I work almost exclusively with xhtml and css I seldom need flash help, but now I do! I have searched the forums, but not found exactly what I´m looking for.

I need to create a picture gallery. The client wants the large image to display in the middle of the screen. Below is a row of thumbnails which are scrollable. When the mouse hovers the row with images to the right, images move in from the right, and when it hovers more to the left images move in from the left. I would like to have two speeds, depending on how far to the right or left you move with the mouse pointer. Increasing speed when you move to the sides. Also, the images have to be clickable to show as a larger version of them in the middle of the screen.

With my limited knowledge in flash, I believe I could do a movie with thumbnails in a row, they are clickable and target the larger image-area. The thumbnails movie will have to be masked in some way, I believe, since it will contain maybe up to 80 small thunbnails. The “scrolling” is my big problem. I figured I can do 4 buttons (left/right x high speed/low speed) over the thumbnails-movie which reacts to hovering, but I have no idea how to make the movie move to the left and right and possibly “loop” to make the last image in the row be followed by the first and not just stop when it comes to the end. Any suggestions on how to do this, or if my other reasoning is totally wrong?

Unfortunately I haven´t been able to do any testing yet, since I have to run (and first find!) the flash installation CD on my new laptop. Long time ago! It could be anywhere!

Would appreciate any help!

[NTD]

Hi,

There is actually quite alot that goes into a project like that. Flash allows for many ways to accomplish the same goal. The method you mentioned of using buttons will work but will take some testing to achieve successfully. Another option is to use purely actionscript for the loading and motions. Here is a function to explore that can control the position of a movieclip based on mouse position on the screen. Speed is adjusted accordingly.....

Frame 1 main timeline...

function accelScroller(myTarget) {
	myMiddle = Stage.width/2;
	this.onEnterFrame = function() {
		moveDist = myMiddle-_root._xmouse;
		myTarget._x += moveDist/10;
		if (myTarget._x>Stage.width) {
			myTarget._x = 0;
		&#125; else if &#40;myTarget._x<0&#41; &#123;
			myTarget._x = Stage.width;
		&#125;
	&#125;
&#125;
accelScroller&#40;mcInstanceName&#41;;

Another necessary method to explore will be the loadMovie command. You can use this method to load a .swf movie or a non progressive .jpg image at runtime.

hope it helps
NTD

[Kristofer]

Thanks a lot for your reply! I´ve installed flash on my new computer, made the design and have the thumbnail gallery in a movieclip, and tried the code you suggested, but I can´t make it work. Any suggestions? Unfortunately I´m probably still too much of a novice to make this work.

I have the design on
www.nephila.se/jakob/jakobfridholm.html

And if you want to look at the .fla file, you can download it from
www.nephila.se/jakob/slidingmenu.zip

Thanks a lot!

Kristofer