browser controlling movie status

[voivoda webforumsuser@macromedia.com]

I'm sure this topic has been covered before but its lack of specific keywords makes finding answers very difficult, my apologies.

Here is the project:

Scenario: A HTML document (no frames) with a menu created with Flash.

Object Specs: The Flash menu is vertical, bullet-point style collapsing/expanding to show section/sub-sections.

Optimal Goal: The user clicks a section in the menu, this opens the HTML page with such content but the menu in this new page is not static in collapsed mode, instead, is expanded showing the sub-sections of the current page and an arrow pointing to the current topic. If the user decides whether or not to visit the sub-sections or use the menu to go to another place, the Flash menu keeps its functionality (to say, its animations) until the user clicks another section. Because the website is using templates to generate new pages, the instructions to the menu should be passed dynamically.

Hypothesis: I would create a variable in the Flash Menu that would control the timeline's position (expanded, collapsed, pointing arrow). This variable would retrieve or receive a value from the HTML page at the moment of loading. After reading this value, the variable would make the movie jump to the specific Menu position.

Queries:

1) How do I pass values from HTML to the movie?
2) Should I use JavaScript in the HTML document to pass the value or make the movie read a tag in the document, for example, the title of the page or a table's name and use this as the variable?
3) Is there a easiest way to control Flash animation depending of HTML document content?


Thanks for your comments and insights. Looking forward...
VM.

[voivoda webforumsuser@macromedia.com]

let me just bring this up