Re: FLASH: Slide show

[Marc Hoffman, Poison Dart Frog Media]

At 12:22 PM 2/23/00 , you wrote:


>This seems confusing. By using LoadMovie, you're only loading one image at a

>time (say 24k) so there is a slight lag. But if you load the whole thing 

>as one

>MC with 10 images, that's 240k, a substantial wait. If it's going to be

>sequential, couldn't one load in the background (visibility set to false) so

>that while you're looking at image 1, image 2 is loading. When you click it

>would actually change the visibility to true.If you click to go to image 2

>before it's done, there might be a preloader sequence or something. Seems this

>would be the most seamless way of doing it. Is it possible to do this with

>LoadMovie?


Flash is a streaming medium. This is important to understand. Flash starts 

playing right away, and keeps playing as long as the bandwidth can keep up 

with the demand for content. There is no reason to preload an entire movie; 

that's the whole point of streaming. You can use FramesLoaded of If Frame 

Is Loaded to test whether enough of the movie has loaded to proceed from 

one frame to another. That's how you would typically hold back a user until 

the content is loaded. You need to anticipate whether the stream will keep 

up with an eager user; if not, you can hold them back (for example, not 

make the "next" button available) until the content they're about to 

request is actually present.


Using LoadMovie means nothing will load until the command is sent to load 

it. Then the user's browser must establish contact with the server (a few 

seconds at best) and load the new movie. A single movie, on the other hand, 

just keeps loading frame after frame, as fast as it can, until everything 

is loaded.


Marc Hoffman


Poison Dart Frog Media: Specializing in Flash Animation and Digital Audio 

Production

Our latest Flash job is on display at <http://www.dartfrogmedia.com/rickfrnd>

See our Flash portfolio at <http://www.dartfrogmedia.com/portfolio>

(featured in Flash 3 Web Animation, by Ken Milburn)



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