randomized placement of xml nodes with Actionscript

Question

I have a flash ecard that I am working on and had one of those "wouldn't it be cool if..." moments!

I would like find out if it is possible to:

1) load in an xml file that contains several names 2) Load each one of those names into a predefined movie clip which would display the name 3) randomize the placement of each name in a given shape area so that the Movie clips with names would randomly fill in to make a specific shape.

I am a novice at AS 2 and haven't touched AS 3. Any help would be appreciated especially with items 2 & 3. No idea if it is possible or even where to begin.

Answer 1

For Item 2:
The way to go about doing this is:

1. Put a text field in the "predefined" movie clip
2. Give the text field an instance name on stage
3. Set the text field to "dynamic"
4. give the "predefined" movie clip an instance name on stage OR if you are familiar with how, dynamically generate them at runtime using new
5. Parse the names out of the XML file and store in a variable
   movieclipname.textfieldname.text = personsname