How to load external assets in background

[talismansa]

Hi all,
I have made myself a flash portfolio website by using Adobe Catalyst which contains a photo gallery (I am an architect by trade so I have no knowledge of programming). Since I wanted to keep the main swf file small, I made all the images linked rather than embedded.

The problem is I wanted the images to fade in, but since the images are too large, the fade finishes before the image has finished downloading, so the image just abruptly appears.

I have found the following thread on this forum which seems to solve my problem
forums/showthread.php3?t=160826
but since I have no actionscript experience I don't actually know how to put that to use, and if that would even work for my Catalyst file.

I have both Flash Pro CS5.5 and Flash Builder 4.5 so if someone could possibly walk me through the steps, it would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks in advance!

[adninjastrator]

the images are too large,
exactly how large, file wise? what are the actual image dimensions? what are the display dimensions? are you scaling down the image for display?
What is the image file type?
You will need to strike a balance between what you deem as "quality", file size, and acceptable download time... a download time which could vary greatly between users.
As for the other post you mentioned... are you wondering about how to create a "preloader"?
Here is some basic details
http://www.republicofcode.com/tutorials/flash/as3preloader/
Best wishes,
Adninjastrator

[talismansa]

Sorry for the vague description, but the images are about 50-90kb, which coupled with my cheap shared hosting means it loads too slow for the fade effects. Obviously I know that can be fixed if I pay for dedicated hosting, but for what I'm doing it's not worth it.

And no I'm not after a pre-loader as I want the images to be downloaded BEFORE the user gets to the gallery.

If you're interested in see my fxp file it can be found here: filedropper[dot]com/sample_5