Can someone help me?

[Onyx Design]

I am almost done with a website, my first flas site, and I have run into a small problem.

The best way to explain is for you to see it:

http://www.onyxwebdesign.com/HDG/hdg.html

Once you have looked you will understand a bit better my question. Each restaurant or nightclub selected is a seperate swf file and and when you click the button to see each section I just have it set to load the corresponding swf. I am wondering how I could get it to load all at once, all the swf's but to still be able to control them with the buttons. I suppose I could just do it all in one file but because the site is so graphic heavy, it would take FOREVER to load.

Any suggestions as to what I could do to make it better would be greatly appreciated. I am not real knowledgable about Action Scripting, but I understand some of the basics.

Thanks in advance.

Clare

[canuckster]

If you go with a bunch of separate SWF's, there's nothing to be gained if load them all anyway. Better to have them load individually on an as-needed basis.

Incidentally, your link showed nothing but a bunch of coloured rectangles, and none of them seemed to do anything. Was that right?

[katnipped]

I am in the same boat. You want to make the thing load fast, so you cut up your site into different swfs, but you also want to make those swfs load fast too. You can't just put them all on the main movie, or else the download would be forever. You have to strike a balance. HEre's what I've done. I've taken elements from my swfs....like sound clips, or jpegs, the real memory hogs and have placed them in an empty movie clip and slapped it on my main movie. I've hidden them on the stage, so that they will download with the main movie. That way, when the user clicks the button to load the swf in, the computer will already have the memory hog things in it's memory, therefore the swf will load faster. Anyway you cut it, there is going to be some waiting, it's just where you make the user wait and for how long. I've got a cool little preloader, so I'm content with ten seconds of waiting for a fifty six k person. ALso, you should determine who you want to see your site, is it big companies that have cable modems, or is it joe public. My site is at http://www.stormpages.com/kalimba, and I'm still tinkering with the download times. It's real slow pressing the play button, . See ya.

[Onyx Design]

Originally posted by James Hutchings
If you go with a bunch of separate SWF's, there's nothing to be gained if load them all anyway. Better to have them load individually on an as-needed basis.

Incidentally, your link showed nothing but a bunch of coloured rectangles, and none of them seemed to do anything. Was that right?

Nope, not right. It takes a few seconds to load the first movie. I don't have a preloader on it (the intro is yet to be done).

Thanks for the input. I'm not sure what I am going to do about this. These swf's are so big because of all the images in them. grrrrr....

[canuckster]

I just checked your page again and I found out we're both right. You've forgotten to include the <EMBED> tags inside the <OBJECT> tags -- and you need to for the SWF to show up in Netscape, which is the browser I use most. Your pager did load in Explorer.

<EMBED src="intro.swf" quality=best bgcolor="#FF6633" ALIGN = center WIDTH=732 HEIGHT=490 TYPE="application/x-shockwave-flash" PLUGINSPAGE="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash"></EMBED>

Try putting that code inside the <OBJECT> tags and then test it in Netscape.

Also, a couple of quick suggestions: the "enter" button is a bit tricky to click on, since the font has slender lines. You might want to add a large rectangle over the work in the Hit area of the button. And then, when your first batch of text appears, I'd only gotten a third of the way through it before it disappeared (my fault for having a cable modem, I suppose); here you might add a 'continue' or 'next' button so that the user can have time to finish reading (meanwhile, your movie(s) is still loading whether they click to go on or pause to read).

[Onyx Design]

I will take care of all that later today. I knew about the "enter" button, but that isn't the REAL intro...as soon as I have the real one done I will fix that button.

I didn't even think to check to see if the site works with Netscape so I thank you!!!!!

Clare