The Flash Connection Make mine Actionscript 3.0!

Hi Jody, So here is a project I am working on. A little background: I have been a Flash designer/animator for some time now, but I have never really learned Actionscript. I have always been in in-house positions where I would work with developers on Flash projects. I am very familiar with how a Flash file should be set up to be handed over to a developer.  Currently I am in the midst of starting a freelance business that will offer Flash design and development, motion graphics as well as custom music and sound design for online games and hopefully advertisements and animated shorts. I have been doing alot of research in starting such a business and obviously I want it to be successful so I am trying to make all the right moves. One of my hurdles right now is to be able to write Actionscript 3 in order to be more valuable to my potential clients and to be able to honestly offer development on top of just design.

SO, attached is a project I'm currently working on. There are two issues I would like to work out. The first being an overall gerneral issue regarding the size of the file. BTW, this project as it is right now is a good example of where I am with my understanding of AS3 to date. With that said, I know there is probably a better way of getting the same actions without having to bog it down with so much code. I just don't know how. This site so far works very well on my Macbook pro. I've also tested it on a few PC laptops where it chugs slightly, however, it chugs really bad on the clients PC laptop. Now just for the record, her laptop has a hard time with just about everything from starting up to just moving the mouse around the screen. Anyhow I'd like to know if its the blur effects Im using or the code or both that I can slim down for optimal performance.

The Event Dispatcher: You'll see that I set up the navigation (mostly with placeholders for now) in the way I described in my email. Each content section is a MC inside of one large content MC that slides up and down to x and y coords. I'd like to gain a solid understanding of the Event Dispatcher in order to have in and out animations for each content section and have the current section animate out before the new section animates in when clicked.

OK so those are the issues I'm dealing with right now. I will now upload the swf and fla. If there is anything else I can do to help you test this forum or anything else in your endeavor, please don't hesitate to let me know. Also, I am still waiting on content from the client and then I can design each content section before I make it all work properly, so if your in the middle of a crunch to get this forum working, I dont expect you to put it on hold in order to help me. I can wait until you have some time.

Thanks Jody,

-Jeff