Open the Movie Explorer from the Window Menu - Window>Movie Explorer. The movie explorer is really a hierarchical tree of all the objects in your movie.
You can filter categories of elements by clicking on the buttons in the Show: row.
The categories are:
text
buttons/movie clips/graphics
actionScripts
video/sounds/bitmaps/
frames and layers
customize which items to show
The options menu in the upper right corner has commands available. You can print the hierarchy tree.
The tree has an expanding and collapsing structure just like the directory structure of some operating systems and website navigation menu trees.
In this illustration, I have expanded the car movie clip symbol to display the 4 movie clip INSTANCES I have named within the car movie clip. I selected these 5 elements for display purposes only.
The listing of the steering_wheel, wheels, and exhaust below the selected items indicate that these are movie clip symbols and do not have any nested symbols within them at this time.
The car movie clip symbol on the main timeline instance name of car1
Of course you can always return to your library to view your symbols as well.
Here is an explanation followed by the steps for naming the instance and targeting the instance. We'll go back and forth between the main timeline and the nested symbols editing mode.
The main timeline is known as the root. It is referenced by an underscore before the word and written _root. Within our car Flash movie's main timeline (_root) we have an *instance* of a car movie clip. In order to identify this particular instance of the car symbol, we must give it a name. Use the instance name car1 for the car that is motion tweened along the path of the hills on the main timeline.
If we were having a few cars on the road, we could name the instances car1, car2, car3, car4 or carRed, carBlue, carYellow, carGreen, dodge, chevy, honda, toyota, etc. It's helpful to use descriptive names.
The instance name of our moving car on the _root or main timeline is:
car1. To reference the instance named car1 on the _root timeline, use this notation: _root.car1
Within the car movie clip library symbol (and all of its instances on the stage) we have 4 nested movie clips:
two instances of the wheels movie clip with the instance name of fronttire and backtire
an instance of the steering wheel with the instance name of 'steering'
an instance of the exhaust movie clip with the instance name of 'exhaust'
Notice that the instance name can be the same as the movie clip name or not. Instance names cannot have spaces. Use a short descriptive name for instance names.
To reference these nested movie clips we use something similar to this old song:
" the knee bone's connected to the thigh bone...the thigh bone's connected to the hip bone.. et cetera...".
The notation for referencing the instance of the wheels movie clip that we named 'fronttire' on the main timeline is:
_root.car1.fronttire
In long English, we're referencing the wheels movie clip instance named fronttire, nested in the car movie clip instance named car1 on the main timeline.
When the user's mouse clicks the stop button, we want to stop the car motion tween on the main timeline. We also want a button to stop the wheels from rotating on the wheels movie clip timeline. Since the wheels movie clip timeline is nested within the car timeline and the car timeline is on the main timeline, we are going down levels to get to the wheels. We will use the instance names of the symbols NOT the symbol names.
Before you can target instances, you need to make sure you have assigned instance names in all your movie clips. If you haven't already assigned instance names to the movie clips, use the following instructions to do so:
Go back to the main timeline by clicking on the text Scene 1 if you're still in symbol editing mode. The car is already on the stage so just open the Properties Panel. Name this instance of the car 'car1'. Do not put a space between the car and the 1.
We will now name the instances of the wheels. However the wheels are not on the main stage. The wheels are nested in the car movie clip symbol. We need to go back into the car symbol editing mode to name the instances of the wheels, steering, and exhaust.
Return to the main timeline by clicking on Scene 1 in the upper left corner of the symbol editing mode.
I'm going to show you how to stop the exhaust and you can use the same code to stop the tires and the steering wheel. Click on all 4 buttons in this Flash movie. When the actions window opens, click the window to close it and continue.
