the index page of my site was built in flash, it contains site requirements, link to macromedia, enter site… etc,etc.
It is the first scene of my movie. The enter site button goes to scene 2 which contains the preloader and then continues into the movie.
after publishing the movie, i go to dreamweaver, create new site etc…etc and save my SWF as ‘index html’ then put it on my server
with the main SWF file.
my questions,
will a user who doesn’t have flash even get to my index page because it was built in flash, or is it OK because it has an ‘index html’ file on my server?
if they do get the index page, will the link to macromedia be active for them to get flash and veiw the rest of the site?
what people usually do is create a regular index.html page and put the .swf in it. Flash will do that for you at publishing. Make sure you check the Flash publish preferences so that HTML is selected.
Mr.X is right. A swf is usually an embedded object in html, you can link directly to a swf but then you are relying that everyone you want to see the page has flash ver 6, which about 30% of the public internet users DO NOT HAVE.
I would use an html as an index and then emmbed the swf, that way you can still send html commands to their browsers. You can still use dreamweaver, just make sure you edit the html document and not the swf file.
so then the way i’m doing it is correct, because I’m using html code for the index?
…and what I’ve noticed is that the SWF has begun loading before I hit ‘enter site’ on the index page. the movie starts loading as soon as the index page comes up and not after I hit ‘enter site’,
why is this happenning??
I don’t mean to be patronizing or anything but you might want to brush up on your basic HTML skills. You sound very confused as what HTML actually is… replacing the extension of a .swf file to html doesn’t make it “html code”.
Your browser just loads whatever is called index.html in the folder you tell him to look, that’s why it loads your .swf. But, to be concize and straight forward, what you’re doing is VERY wrong. You have to have a real HTML page as your index.html (like the default one that you get when you open DW or the one you get in Flash when you publish. Do what we tell you to do or you’ll run into an infinite number of problems.
There are several sites that start soley on flash. Many developers want this. It is not so bad to do this. It is entirely possible that html may completly disappear and flash will be the only internet programming language.
I personally never ran into a site that didn’t have a regular index.html for home page. I’m sure you can find anything out there… But, why ask for trouble? I can’t see any advantage about that approach, only inconvenient… I personaly think that it’s a really bad idea. Plus, Victim didn’t sound like he was trying to experiment new technics but just like he was confused… But now, he’s got it!
take care
Yes confusion was the issue and you got a great bead on the issue. Hard to manage a website without html to manage it, but you sound like you already got a handle on html and all I am saying is this:
Changes in this industry take place in weeks, not years like others, stay on top of it flash has really tried to grasp control of browser in/output and you can ALWAYS use XML in mx…
But, why ask for trouble? I can’t see any advantage about that approach, only inconvenient… I personaly think that it’s a really bad idea. Plus, Victim didn’t sound like he was trying to experiment new technics but just like he was confused… But now, he’s got it! 
