Separation of Flash Site

[Rob G]

What's the best way to separate a flash site that's fairly large. would you recommend splitting up the site into to different scenes? With preloader scenes inbetween? I have a 2 meg flile http://www.the11.net and I'm just trying to figure out the best way to split it up, becuase right now, it takes 3.5 minutes to preload the entire site on a cable modem. Any suggestions would be very helpful?

rob

[Billy T]

use loadMovie

when ever a button is clicked load an external movie with its own preloader

break each section of your site up into seperate swfs

cheers

[Rob G]

I appreciate the help, now just to clarify, would I use a load Movie function? Not the get URL function, because I don't want them to open in a new HTML page? Is that correct?

[Billy T]

no dont use get url

its hard to know exactly what is best...

have a look at this

http://www.musicbycab.com/

now the movie that loads when you enter has the graphics down the bottom right and a bunch of load movie actions.

The buttons are in an external swf that get loaded into a level

the audio into another level

the first movie also has an empty movie called "content"

whenever a button is clicked it loads an external content swf into the content clip.

That way stuff just gets loaded when it is needed. If you have some content loaded into say, level1, loading another external movie into level1 with replace the one that was already there

all external swfs should have their own preloader to let the user know that something happening

I'm probably not explaining it all very well

check out the load movie tutorial here

actually I had an example that I put together

I'll attach it - the one that loads all the external swfs is main.fla

cheers

[Rob G]

Using the loadmovie function, will this enable me to have a smooth trasition between my multiple .swf files. example is this http://www.premierstudios.com. I don't want to my buttons to link to new html pages with .swf files inside of them??

[Billy T]

some of their links use loadmovie - some dont

how smooth the transition is depends how big your external file is

it is possible to pre-load external movies and set them to invisble until they are needed but I think you should do some basic load movie stuff first

your buttons dont link to html pages - they link to external swfs

cheers

[Rob G]

thanks I really appreciate the help...could I use Load movie clip, and when you click one of my buttons have it go to a movie clip and preload it and play it? if you check out the site http://www.the11.net and click on broadband, I have the pages as movie clips, and when you click the button, I used the go to frame command to go to the frame and play the movie clip, but this makes the load time heavy. Thanks for your help

rob

[Billy T]

dont be confused - loadmovie cant be used to load the movie clips that are in your library - just self contained external swfs.

for your site I suggest that you start with a blank movie that has two load movie actions. one to load the buttons (which you will put into an external swf) into level1 and the second to load the audio (which will also be in an external swf) into level 2

Then when the user clicks a button it loads that section (which is in yet another external swf) into level1 - replacing the buttons.

please do the load movie tutorial and check out the manual to see what is capable with loadmovie

cheers