preloader??

you said there aare no stupid question....what is the point of a preloader? is it for heavy flash sites?

A preloader is used so then your movies don't appear choppy as they are loading, instead you can place a progress bar to show how much has loaded or you can place an animation (sometimes requires it's own preloader just to make sure this too doesn't appear choppy for low bandwidth users). This way your website/movie isn't displayed until they have fully loaded in the background.

Yes they are mostly used for larger websites.

Hope this helps,
Tyouk

Preloaders are there because without them the movie would start.... then stop until it downloaded the first image/song or whatever, then it would keep going after it finished downloading that. This makes for a very unpleasant experiance. A Preloader loads everything right off the bat, so you have a smooth and enjoyable time at the site.