Is it possible to keep a movieclip from loading in on the first frame?

[Faux]

I've got a flash site with a lot of movie clips embeded into it, and it takes a really long time to initially load the site up. I've tried putting preloaders in front of the movie clips, to kind of "take some of the weight off" of the initial load, but I think I might be missing something, because the preloaders seem to just zip by, and all the loading time is still in the initial load. How can I make it so that those movie clips don't load until they are told to play?

[Ask The Geezer]

If they are on layers, make sure they don't appear till after the preloader code, like frame 3 or later. If your loading them dynamically, then you have to uncheck Export in first frame in the Linkage, and put a copy somewhere off stage.

[Faux]

Do I need to tell the flash file specifically to not load these particular quicktime movieclips when it first loads?

[Cycle]

Yeah. You should make sure they aren't being exported in the first frame. You should also make sure that they appear in a frame that is after the frame that the preloader is in.

[Faux]

How do I do that?

[Cycle]

Right click on each of your items in your Library and choose Linkage. Make sure none of them have the "Export in first frame" option checked.

Also, just have your preloader in frame 1, and then put the starting of the rest of the movie in a different frame.

[Faux]

Okay, thanks for this. I've gotten to the 'Linkage Proparties' dialog box, but it looks like the 'Export in first frame' checkbox is greyed out by default, unless I check the 'Export for runtime sharing' or 'Export for Actionscript' checkboxes. Which one should I click? I have MX 2004, if that matters.

[Cycle]

If the "Export in first frame" checkbox is grayed out then you're all good. Just make sure your preloader is the only thing in the first frame of your movie.

[Faux]

Well, that's the way it's always been. It wasn't working that way. When I click on either the 'Export for Actionscript' or 'Export for runtime sharing' checkboxes, the 'Export in first frame' shows up as already checked on. I think I have to check one, so I can uncheck the 'Export in first frame' checkbox.

But just in case I can't get this to work, do you know of any good preloader tutorials I can look at?

And thanks for the help.

[Cycle]

I'm not sure if the tutorials for preloaders are any good on this site or not, but go to the Tutorials link on FlashKit. Then do a search for "preloader".

[Ask The Geezer]

This will explain preloaders, and you can get the fla.

http://www.learningflashmx.com/flash..._tutorial.html