Good Loading methods

[pakman]

I come with a boaring question, but one that might save many people time around the world...

I am lloking at the best way to spread out my movie and load bits of it when required. I am trying to load everythig via an external library and call on the movie clips I need dynmicly. In the "linkage" pop up in the library, I unticked "export in first frame", but than I couldn't call it later throught actionscript.
Does anybody know how this works?
Any other good tips to preload stuff without the user noticing...

[Jesse]

If you uncheck that option you must drag the element onto the stage (inside Flash) at some point during the movie, which is when it will be loaded (instead of frame 1). It will only be available after that point in the movie.

[pakman]

Thanks for the quick reply... A few more loading question, if you can be bothered: :)

1.Font loading: when I export a font dynamicaly in diffrint text boxes, does it export new charechters each time and increase download time? or does it export the font for the enitre movie?
Should I consider saving the font as a library symbol and refrencing it?

2.If I am using many dynamic elements which might not be called each time. Should I use an external library to reffrence all my symbols?
Is there a way of showing a preloader just for a specific MovieClip, rather than loading it as a sperate movie?
3.When using an external library, will the user have to wait for the entire library to load before he can view to content? or will it load each element at a time? for instance... while she is viewing the first page, the third one will preload in the background...

3.Any good tips on loading?

[Jesse]

1. The font faces will only be read once. Using a library item which is just a field which contains the font is a good pracitce to get into in my mind as that's how you embed fonts for creation of text fields on the fly.

2. You can preload a specific movieclip. See the Flash 5 Preloader Tutorial. It's just like that but you use your_mc.getBytesLoaded() etc.

3. The user will have to wait for the content to load based on where it appears in the movie. They can't view frame 5 until the content on Frame 5 has loaded for instance. If you do decide to use a library item with the font in it, you must drag it onto the stage somewhere early in your movie because only library items actually found on the stage (and those with linkage) will actually be loaded. Unused items aren't in the SWF at all.

[pakman]

Thanks again, your knowledge is very usefull...
In regards to the font as a library symbol, I can't really figure it out. I checked the macromedia help files for that topic but they weren't too suefull.

1.What is the purpose of embedding the font in the library? rather than just embedding the font in the text box.

2.If the font is embedded as a library symbol, can a diffirnet computer who does not have the font face installed on thier system publish a SWF with the original font reading from the library?

3. How do you assign a font symbol to text fields creadted on the fly. this is what I tried, but I couldn't get it to work.

this.createTextField("output", 1, 0, 0, 200, 40);
myFormat = new TextFormat()
output.text = "Thank for the help" // GoodFont is my library Linkage ID name;
myFormat.font = "goodFont";
myFormat.size = 16;
output.setTextFormat(myFormat);

4.How come when I set:

output.embedFonts = true;

Than no text comes up, even when I set the text box to a font I have in my system, it will olny work:

output.embedFonts = false;

Thanks :-)