Tutorial 10: Preloading loaded movies

[stephenF]

I've just looked at tutorial 10 - so for Jesse, or anyone else who's got the time , I've got a general (almost certainly ignorant) question -

Why would you want to preload loaded movies instead of having them somehow incorporated into the main swf, either as movie clips, or sequences in the swf? (Or as scenes)? There's obviously an advantage in using preloaded movieclips that I don't get, so thanks for any help.

[Rupert]

There are a bunch of reasons you would/could store your content in smaller clips and load it on demand OR all at once. The tutorial you looked is targeted (I think) more at loading lots of little clips all at once. This does seem a bit odd at first "Why not just keep them all in the main file?" The reasons for setting a file up in this way can be things like simplicity of update, file management etc. If you need all your data available "instantly" then this is probably the way to go...

alternately, the second way to tackle it is this: The general idea for web delivery is to minimse the amount of data your viewer is having to download. By building a main "framework" movie, your viewer can call up your content "on demand" rather than having to download a whole lot of content they might never look at.

Picture a brochure site for a hardware store that has 10 products showcased on it. You log in and you only want to look at where the store is located and whether they sell hammers (work with me here people!). It would be pretty annoying to have to wait for all the pictures of wheelbarrows, nails, chainsaws etc to download when you were only looking for hammers.
Horses for courses as they say, you choose what fits your scenario.
Cheers, Rupert

[stephenF]

Thanks for that. What you've said also confirms what for me would be a good reason to use loadMovie (the on demand thing), - say, if you've got a game that you don't want the user to have to load unless they're going to play it. Not that I can do games, yet....