I read all the tus on here about making preloaders and they were very helpful.
BUT!
I stll have a few lingering questions.
PART 1.
A. The tuts show how to make basic preloaders but what about designing your own graphic animations for the preloaders? Do you just make a movie clip for the aniamted preloader?
B. Does this defeat the purpose of the preloader since you are probably adding more file size to the swf by making an elborate preloader?
PART 2.
A. Once you design your custom preloader, where should the preloader go? On the the timeline of the swf it’s loading before the the swf starts? I see that this is where some people put it but if there are better place that are more efficient I’d like to know. Should it go on the root timeline always?
I know this had been discussed before but I can’t seem to find specific answers.
I have a preloader movie clip - it’s timeline contains 2 layers:
one layer has my actions
the other layer has ANOTHER movieclip on it that contains my animation and my progress bar and data (kBytesTotal, kBytesLoaded, etc.) that is to be retrieved by my script in the outer (or would that be parent) clip.
My problem is that when I test the movie, the animation plays, but my loadbar doesn’t scale and there is no progress data being retireved. How do I correctly link up my script and my clips?
lolz i know. The real problem with preloaders or difficulty is not so much the astionscript behind the preloader because that stays pretty constant, if frame loaded and then _root.gotoannplay (2) or whatever but the difficulty is when a need or desire to customise it whether it maybe masking it or instead having a normal loading bar, people want bar ones with those that have “stripes running across”. Though i still love shairf’s preloader how the mouse follows the bar,
Wow, Ubik your preloader is SWEEEEEET!!! Very nice! I use those corners on mine too - I think I’m gonna change it though since I’m seeing them a lot now.
As for my .fla file, I went and changed some things around. I got rid of the animation layers I was thining of doing but to get the gist of it - I want to have an animation playing (some tech stuff behind the bar) while the bar is scaling with the percentage and stuff.
Like I said, I took some layers away so now I just have actions, text, bar, and graphics (which has the corners on it) but try and see what I mean anyway -
I probably don’t need all those layers but I’m so used to having to put everything one separate layers just in case - I’m brainwashed by photoshop!
EDIT: My file is too big to upload so I just sent you a fla w/the loader.
i have a question…for what reason would a preloader not show up on the screen untill like 60% or so…i even downloaded the one a few posts ago…and i didnt change a thing…im viewing it in the bandwidth profiler mode and set it at different speeds…this isnt always the case…just sometimes using the same code for a different movie the loader doesnt show up untill 60% or higher…any thoughts?
With all the threads about this on kirupa we could write one 
