Flash authoring environment strange Test Movie behavior (AS3) - actionscript-3

Question

I can't for the life of me figure out why this is happening. Let me describe what I'm experiencing.
I add everything dynamically via actionscript.
In the Flash authoring environment, when I test the movie, sometimes all of the movieclips on stage disappear and all I see is the color of the Stage.
The strange thing is that I can still rollover/rollout (I added trace statements to my rollover/rollout handlers).
I'm also tracing out the 'visible' and the 'alpha' property and visible=true and alpha=1.0 !!!
On thing that I am seeing is sometimes the rollover/rollout methods get called multiple times in quick succession. I.e. the method invocation order is rollover, rollout, rollover or rollout, rollover, rollout.
The actions that I have in my rollover and rollout methods are really simple. All they do is turn on/off other movieclips...imagine a map...when you rollover an icon, a path shows up on the map and when your rolloff, the path goes away.
However, if I adjust the window of the test movie window, everything appears again!
The crazy thing is that when I publish it, this behavior doesn't happen in the browser or as an app!
What's going on? Could it be a memory thing with the authoring environment?
Posting some code here:
private function rollOverUserListener ( e:MouseEvent ) {
trace(">>>>>>>> rollOverUserListener() e.currentTarget.name : " + e.currentTarget.name);
trace("e.currentTarget.alpha: " + e.currentTarget.alpha);
trace("e.currentTarget.visible: " + e.currentTarget.visible);
e.currentTarget.rollOverAction(); //just scales the icon a little
//fade up/down the appropriate path
worldMap.resetPaths(); //turns off all the paths
for (var i=0; i<users.length; i++){
if ( e.currentTarget == users[i] ) { //highlight the right path
worldMap.highlightPath(i);
}
}
}
private function rollOutUserListener ( e:MouseEvent ) {
trace("<<<<<<<< rollOutUserListener() e.currentTarget.name : " + e.currentTarget.name);
e.currentTarget.rollOutAction(); //scales down the icon to normal
worldMap.resetPaths();
}

Answer 1

I don't think it's efficient to try and solve this problem via posting the code you did.
But, my guess is that the difference in behavior that you are seeing is due to the flash player version.
CS5 or whatever version you have of flash, comes with the latest player at that time. But the flash player is constantly being upgraded, so when you are in your browser -- you most likely have the latest flash player. That could account for the differences you are seeing.
However, the code above doesn't help to much without seeing the highlightPaths and resetPaths functions. I see that you have a trace, but right after that -- there's code executed that could potentially easily change the state of anything you traced before rendering the frame.
Stick some traces after that code to see if you get what you expect.
Are you using any libraries that might have features only supported by a newer flash player ?

Answer 2

private function rollOverUserListener ( e:MouseEvent ) {
trace(">>>>>>>> rollOverUserListener() e.currentTarget.name : " + e.currentTarget.name);
trace("e.currentTarget.alpha: " + e.currentTarget.alpha);
trace("e.currentTarget.visible: " + e.currentTarget.visible);
e.currentTarget.rollOverAction(); //just scales the icon a little
//fade up/down the appropriate path
worldMap.resetPaths(); //turns off all the paths
for (var i=0; i<users.length; i++){
if ( e.currentTarget == users[i] ) { //highlight the right path
worldMap.highlightPath(i);
}
}
}
private function rollOutUserListener ( e:MouseEvent ) {
trace("<<<<<<<< rollOutUserListener() e.currentTarget.name : " + e.currentTarget.name);
e.currentTarget.rollOutAction(); //scales down the icon to normal
worldMap.resetPaths();
}