preloader location

[Bezirker]

I am loading external swf into an empty mc on root. I have a preloader which sits in the starting frames of the external swf. Everything works fine except.. since the preloader exists in the external swf the user has to wait until the request for the file is complete and than the preloader starts. This means that if a connection is slow or the request has to wait a bit the preloader does not appear instantly and so the user is faced with a blank screen.

My question is whether the location of the preloader is correct (it is placed on the beginning frames of the external swf), or whether I should place it internally (and how) to make it preload external swf. Is onClipEvent (data) necessary or helpful in this situation?

I simply do not want the user be faced with a blank screen until the swf starts to load.

[Esquared]

I always create a "Preloader" movie clip in my main file, and a second empty movie clip called "LoadedMovie" to load it into. I place an empty frame at frame one with a stop() action, and then just say _root.Preloader.play() whenever I load something in. To load something, use _root.LoadedMovie.loadMovie('External.swf") Then, within the preloader movie clip, I have a basic setup similar to what you must already have in the external file (with a loop), but I check for _root.LoadedMovie.getBytesLoaded() instead...that returns how much of whatever .swf is being loaded into that clip has loaded, and the loaded .swf will play on load completion automatically.

Make sense?

[confused]

sometimes depending on the type of movie
I make the preloader go to 'frame 2' or whereever the movie is
at 50% and it speeds thing up quite alot and buy the time people start clicking away the rest of the mc is almost loaded.

as for the blank screen i've been having this problem too!
My problem turned out to be unessesary info from components loading in first frame and slowing things down..
I used bandwith profiler to see what was happening and it took quite a while for first frame to load..

Thanks to my teacher at colege we got it goin.
Mind you this could not be your problem at all.
Just a thought:D