Newbie needs a few things

I started using flash last week and I caught on really quick, but there are so
many things that are way over my head. I ended up starting with a templete and
modifying it to my own, so that its completely different and it really came out
good, i just have a few questions to tweak it before I upload it to the server
and I am begining to get extremely frustrated because its just beyond me at
this point.

Here we go:

1. I have linked a few buttons to websites and files on the site, when i do
"test movie" the mouse treats them like links but doesnt do anything when i
actually click on it....is that normal and nothing to worry about?

2. I want to create a typical comments page to open in a new window, how do i
do that....a typical comments page like on a blog no formating nothing special
somewhere where people can leave name,location,comments i havent found an way
to make a comments page and i have searched.

3. I have a menu bar on the left... 4 bars, 4 pages to the site......they are
loading onto the stage off center all in the same orientation down and to the
right its driving me nuts i dont know how that happend or how to fix it.

4. I want to create a "download counter" to show how many times a file has
been downloaded, also right now i have it set up as a right click save target
as, if theres a better way please let me know

5. And last,one of my 4 pages acts like it loaded once you click on the menu
button, transition works and sticks but it doesnt actually load onto the stage
nothing is there this is also driving me nuts it worked fine and out of nowhere
all the sudden now it doesnt.

If someone would like to do it for me i can send the files to them, i bet it
would be easy for you........otherwise i can try on my own .....thanks for your
help!

Hello and welcome to the forums

1. When you test movie, the movie is published to the same directory you are
saving your FLA. If you want to know if your buttons are working properly,
create a new layer, and put a trace statement on the frame where your buttons
are located, for example,

myButton.onPress = function(){
trace("clicked on myButton");
}

I would say this is normal.

2. There are several ways to create the comments page you are talking about...
this is one way,
http://www.flash-creations.com/notes/control_contactform.php... its a 'Contact
Form', so it has a bit more info than probably what you are looking for, but it
may help you.

3. I would say that has something to do with registration points. Initially
when you create the movie clip, you should see "Registration" and 9 squares in
a 3 x 3 grid. Whichever square is black indicates the orientation of the
movieclip, like where "0,0" is. A way to fix it would be to break apart one of
your items and convert it to a symbol again, and make sure the middle dot in
the 3 x 3 grid is black. You only get to specify the registration point when
you initially create the symbol, at least that's how I understand it...

4. Not sure about that one!

5. I would check file names\linkage identifiers for that specific page, there
may be typo or something.

HTH,

Doug