Need help: load movie clip from library without exporting on frame 1?

[Nig 13]

What do you know, English is also my third language and I also thank the internet

angelhdz, I've noticed that your English has improved a lot since when you first came here, and it's really good now. I constantly get amazed by how fast you learn new things, and the same goes for your actionscript coding skills. They've improved so much since last time, good job

btw, vacation is singular in English, unlike spanish

I doubt that we will get back the old design, so we better get used to this one, lol. The main problem is that the Actionscript tags aren't working properly, and that's what's really bothering me. Hopefully, I've just finished programming a syntax highlighter for use in this forum. I just need to add keywords to be highlighted, and then I'll post it here for everyone to use until the AS tags have been fixed.

[angelhdz]

Thanks for these words Nig!!!! Life is about learning and teaching. You can't keep all you have learned for yourself, you have to spread it out! And I realize that at the same time you teach, YOU LEARN! Good luck with that thing of the Highlighter, it will be very uselful arround here hehe

[Nig 13]

at the same time you teach, YOU LEARN!

that is the reason why I've learnt so much actionscript since when I joined this forum

[koenahn]

However, there's an option which you can consider using instead. It's not exactly what you want, but better than nothing, right :P?

There's an event handler which is called when a Movieclip is loaded, it's the onLoad handler. If you use it on the _root movieclip, you can check when the Flash file has fully loaded. I did an experiment myself, and it indeed works with the white screen, and is called once the first frame is visible (i.e. right after the white screen is gone). You can exploit this event handler to check when your Flash movie has been loaded, and then instantly redirect it to Frame 2, where supposedly the movieclip is. Then, you can use the movieclips' properties, getBytesLoaded() and getBytesTotal(), to check when your movieclip is fully loaded. I am not sure if this will work, because I haven't tried the method with having the movieclip on second frame, hence I don't know whether it will actually be shown at once there, or if it will appear once it has been loaded (once getBytesLoaded()/getBytesTotal() is equals to 1 [, or 100, if you're multiplying it with 100]). You'll just have to try that for yourself and see if it works. The reason this isn't what you want, is because you don't know when Flash will actually load that movieclip. Maybe it will load it in the end, or halfway through - you never know, but if this works, it's the closest you will get, I think. If you're trying this inside Flash using download stimulation, onLoad will be called instantly when the Test Movie flash player shows up, so don't get fooled by that, because when testing in your browser - according to my experiment - onLoad will be called when the white screen is gone, and the flash's first frame has been loaded and fully displayed.

I tried this, but I don't think I've completely understood. Does this apply if I'm not using external swf's? Should I set all my clips to export on frame 3, place the preloader onstage on frame 1 and the character on frame 2?

By the way, the two of you speak English very well. Especially you, Nig. I was convinced you were a native.