Shared libraries

[sonya]

I work for a veterinary college, and I'm putting together a series of emergency case simulations (you can take a look at the first case at http://www.rvc.ac.uk/review/cases/)

I want to use shared libraries because:
1. Users choose their own path through the content and I don't want to force them to download all the media
2. The same photos and diagrams will be shared by several flash files

I've set up a series of shared libraries to store the external content for the first case. However, when I link to any one shared library, all the other shared libraries are loaded.

Has anyone else come across this?

Many thanks,
Sonya

[sonya]

Just heard from macromedia tech support:

Greetings Sonya,

You could have a blank movie clip in your Macromedia Flash movie, which calls on the first Shared Library item. This way the streaming and loading of the other files could be more smooth as well. The if condition preloading statement can have the blank
movie clip in the beginning, but the statement itself will not preload a Shared Library, the movie clip call to the item begins the transfer of files. Shared Libraries are more for authoring and networking convenience, and are not used best in small file
with a large Shared Library at run time. Preloading a larger file will sometimes offer the best results.

Best regards,
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Peter Alan Davy
Macromedia Technical Support Specialist
http://www.macromedia.com/support/flash/

[sonya]

Finally got a shared library to preload, following the advice I got from macromedia tech support. Haven't tested it over a modem link yet, but works fine with a fast connection.

Preloader
Frame 1: initialises variables
Frame 2: jump to first frame of content if final frame loaded, otherwise play a loading movie (which also plays in Frames 3 and 4)
Frame 3: play a movie containing a shared library item
Frame 4: go to and play Frame 2

Hope this helps someone else!