Flash questions

[dtm32236]

So, I tried Googling this, but I'm probably just not searching the correct terms/phrases...

I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to have a layer stay on top of everything throughout my Flash movie without having to keep dragging the frames across the whole timeline. Does that make sense?

So, what I'm looking to do is to have a header and footer on top of everything, and this will never change or move. There has to be a way to do this without having to keep draging the keyframes to the last frame of the movie, right?

I'm not really sure how scenes work, and when you double-click an object and it goes into a new timeline (?), I don't really get that either. I saw a tutorial where the instructor did this, and set certain animations on objects, then he went back to the main timeline (with only one frame) and the objects were animated when previewing the movie. That doesn't make sense to me. How does that work if there's only 1 keyframe in the main timeline?

Can anyone shine some light on this for me? I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks so much,
Dan

[Pixelchik]

I think you may be referring to MovieClips?

[Eye for Video]

Pixelchik is right on in mentioning MovieClips. If all the "sub" action is created in it's own movie clip, then brought into the maintime in one frame as mc_1, mc_2, etc. then a single layer, single framed "header" or "footer" would always be playing as the "sub" movie clips played out.
The effect is that the header would then stretch out over the entire 439 frames (or whatever) of the mc_1 movie clip.
Teamwork can solve problems....
Eye for Video
www.cidigitalmedia.com

[dtm32236]

nice! again, that helped so much! I looked up some tutorials on MovieClips and I think I'll be alright now.

I still can't figure out how to get a layer to play across the entire movie without adding 439 (or whatever) frames. But with MovieClips, at least I only have to do this to one layer rather than 3 or 4... if that makes sense.

You guys have helped a lot (it's not the first time either). I really appreciate it, but I'm going to stop bothering you two. A friend suggested Lynda.com video tutorials, so I think I'll check it out.

Thanks again, you guys are awesome.

My best to you...

-Dan

(and let me know if you need any help in HTML/CSS - that's my specialty... some graphic design too)