I was just wondering when do you know what a preloader is needed? Is there a certain size the file should be? Or should I just include one anyways?
I have made one for my site, but I notice that it only appears for about 1 second before the the movie is loaded and ready to go. But I am also using highspeed internet and I know it will be a little slower for someone using a dial up connection or something like that. So I’m thinking maybe I should just include the preloader anyways, just in case? Does that sound right?
Any light anybody could shed on this would be greatly appreciated.
I’d say you’ve got the right idea here. Since you’re using a high speed connection it will go very quickly and you might not even see the preloader. But those poor peeps who are using older, slower machines <i>will</i> see something.
Personally, I’d go with a preloader once you get past a couple of hundred K, just to be on the safe side.
Go to the control menu and test your movie. Select view and select bandwith profiler. Go to the debug menu and set it to 56 k. Go to the view menu and select show streaming. This will show how the site will look for a user with a dial up connection.
You want the green bar to be ahead of the playhead which is gray.
I think that you should use preloaders always, with everything in your site.
It doesn´t has to be always a default preloader that shows the percentage of bites loaded, it could be something like a light reflex, or a blinking icon, for the little movies, and the percentage preloader you can use on bigger movies. That way your users will have something to look while the movie is loading.
If you open this forum on a machine with a slow conection, search for the lostinbeta footer. That animatios is probably lower than 20k, in spite of that it has a preloader.
That shows the level of your proffesionalism.
