Ok… I’m at a point maybe 1/3 through the basic design of this project. I have one beginning .fla… basic opening splash stuff and then a group of graphic symbols that were .bmp’s . This …swf is 169K. (the fla is huge)
Following that is a “menu .swf” that i’ll load in… and after that will come more in the way of slide shows with selections within a scrollpane. I don’t know yet how big that will be.
I’ve not yet studied up on preloaders, and I don’t know precisely how to do them (I’ll learn). But I don’t know what’s BIG… and what is not.
I guess I don’t yet know the dynamics of what happens when you load a movie…and or unload (if this makes things easier on the end user). If someone could offer a general response about these issues I’d be so grateful. I have lots of books but it’s hard to find answers specifically addressing this.
I used the bandwidth tester and set it to 28.8 modem, but my own system is fast, and so I am uncertain how much lag this size movie will cause. Since I’m new, I don’t know how big is too big. If mine is (too big) then I’ll have to discover what can be done.
I’ve seen different sized sites, ranging from 100kb - 1Mb+. It depends what your doing. Of course a graphicall intense site, will be larger - but then again the visitor would expect that.
The best way is to divide the sections into seperate swfs that are loaded when requested. The swf’s stay in the browser’s cache once loaded (unless you use script to force a fresh version to be loaded), so forward and back navigation shouldn’t be a problem.
Give each subsection it’s own preloader or use a uniform preloading animation for the sections.
I don’t use flash primarily for websites, so other’s will probably give your more advice, but I’m not sure how big is too big, because like I said, I’ve seen varying sized sites, and some can’t help being the size they are - but are well structured to load in stages.
Some even have games, like one I saw had a simple Mr. potato head head game that can be achieved with startDrag(); while the main site was loading.
Flash streams on load… meaning if you had no preloader it would load frame 1, then 2 and so on and you would experience lag if you caught up to the stream as waited for it to continue. Now no flash site is really too big - IF!! it is cut into sections that are all seperate swf’s that load on demand. Let me explain… say you have a site with a product, gallery, abd about section… well if you put all these into one swf and preload it, the user will have to wait for EVERY section to load… even if the only part they want to see is “about”. Instead make your site layout, and nav menu one swf and preload only that (which all users need) then creat your seperate sections as seperate swf and have them loaded (and preloaded if needed) into your main movie using the loadMovie command. That way users only have to wait for the parts they want to see load. I hope that was clear… I tend to explain things in a round about manner.
ok… thank you. I’ve been working on separating portions out to different .swf’s.
Is there a benefit to the unload command? or would that make going back tough (…um…i don’t have a back button anyway yet… )
I explained the idea of an all flash site to my client and the need for the player, but they seemed content to use it anyway. It"s their first desire. (they saw other sites they liked). I’ll make an alternate html site after I think. I’m having so much fun learning this anyway. I’m clumsy with the actionscript I think, and I think I’ve not used everything as elegantly as I’ve read about, but anyway, it’s evolving.
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