Recently whilst tweaking a project outsourced to us we came upon a problem with a Flash gallery. The gallery in question was an external movie loaded into the main ‘holder.swf’ when called upon.

The gallery worked fine when previewed seperately. Only when it loaded as an external movie, into the holder.swf did the gallery refuse to work. By this, I mean, the thumbnails, and the scroll bar they were placed in, would not respond to the mouse.

Now, theres possibly a few things to do at this point, but when working to a deadline, obviously, the quickest choice is the best choice. The ActionScript for the thumbnails worked with ‘_root.’ instructions, and appeared to be becoming confused with the holder.swf mistaking that as the main ‘_root.’ file.

Adding this: this._lockroot = true;

To the main timeline of the ‘gallery.swf’ corrects this confusion by making the timeline on the external movie the actual ‘_root.’ for the entire time the external movie is open.

This solution is quick, involves minimal coding and is easy to implement.