Flash site not working on dial-up systems. Too slow.

[jaruss]

I a new Flash user and have developed a site that works great on any cable system but not dial-up. I've been looking at other entries in this forum as well as reading books and looking at the Macromedia site but nothing I've tried has helped.

I'd appreciate suggestions. There are some images in the file but not a ton of them. It's really a pretty basic site.

Here's the url to the test version. Any ideas?

http://home.comcast.net/~cjruss/wingo.html

 

[oldnewbie]

You need to add a preloader, for slow connected users.

 

[jaruss]

Hi, I've gone through a quick tutorial on preloader so I understand conceptually how to do it. What I don't understand is what a preloader will actually do for the user. Does it just give them something to watch while the movie is loading so they know it's working or, does it actually help to load the movie gradually so the whole movie doesn't need to be dowloaded before they see part of it?

Thanks for your help!

 

[Adam14]

A preloader loads the movie so that the user doesn't get slow and choppy animation while the page loads in front of them...the preloader can be set to load any amount of the site you want before it starts. If you have the first half of your site that has big animations you can preload that part and while it's playing for the user, the rest of the site is being loaded in the background. It's really up to you how you want it to work. Does this help?

Adam

 

[oldnewbie]

It basically allows them to see something while enough of the movie is allowed to preload, before you start it playing, so that when you do, it will play without breaks, even if the movie is not completely downloaded, and it in fact, continues to download in the background while the beginning of the movie is playing.
Problem is that on slow connections as 56k dial-up modems, depending on content, you may need to preload as much as 80% to 90% of the movie, for it to actually play without breaks, on the initial download.
Of course, once cached, then the movie should start playing right away.

 

[jaruss]

Does it help to break the movie into several .swf files. I thought that I could create a .swf for the different scenes. Instead of having a button link to a different scene, I could call a scene by using the "Get URL" command.

Would this even make sense?

 

[Adam14]

On any full sites I've done, which haven't been many, I've used a main swf, and then loaded external "pages" into the main when they were called upon...I found it the best way to cut down on big load times. Instead of using get URL, you can use loadMovie or loadMovieNum to load external swfs into your main one...I think that's the best solution, personally, but if oldnewbie has another suggestion, I'd listen to him ;-)

Adam

 

[oldnewbie]

Well, Adam's suggestion does makes sense, to cut down on the initial download time, and you could get your interface up faster that way. But you'd probably still need to have a preloader on your main interface movie and to add preloaders (or a generic preloader within the main interface movie) to load the other now external movies, to ensure they would still play without breaks for slow connected users.

 

[jaruss]

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll give it a try.