Loading HTML before flash movie

[Rohdem]

I am just starting out learning the ropes of how to develop in Flash, namely Flash 5. I have built a small movie that I have on a right-hand side of a webpage. On the left-hand side, I have a navigation bar with about 10 buttons on it. My problem is that the buttons will start to load on the left, but when the movie is loaded, the rest of the web page will stop loading and the movie will play, thus only 3-4 buttons are visible when everything is done. Can I somehow force the entire web page to load before the flash movie starts?

Thanks Mike Rohde
rohdem@marshallengines.com

 

[davdesign]

hi Mike

To be honest I haven't yet come across this problem, can you post a link to the html page?

dave davdesign@pinkzeppelin.com

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

 

[oldnewbie]

Mike,

I gather your buttons on the left were done using html or javascript and are not part of the Flash movie, right?
Are you using a frameset?

;-)

 

[armorsix]

Give us the link to your site so we can take a look.

 

[Rohdem]

Sorry, its a Monday!!! It would make sense for me to post a link, wouldn't it!!

http://www.therohde.com

It is a personal website that I'm using to learn flash, then I would like to be able to start building some flash sites for our company.

A couple of notes that I forgot to mention before:

My HTML is quite rusty and wasn't really that good to begin with, so most of the site was built using Frontpage 2000 (maybe that's the problem ;-) ). The buttons on the left are a frontpage navigation bar. It is a shared border on most of the pages on the site.

The flash movie calls a cool little javascript each time a new letter is shown that shakes the browser window. This may be where the problem lies (just throwing out ideas, like I said, web pages and flash aren't my main area of expertise).

When I first added the flash movie to the page and tested it, it worked fine, I'm assuming because the buttons and other images were cached on my machine. When I cleared the cache, I noticed that only a few of the buttons would load, then the movie would start, and the web page (the buttons) would stop loading.

Thanks for the help Mike Rohde
rohdem@marshallengines.com

 

[armorsix]

Now having part of the buttons in the flash movie, you should build your self a preloader, a preloader is an actionscript that basical stops the movie from playing until its finished loading, or loads a certain frame on the root timeline. It looks like you have to many elements loading at one time for the flash moive to run right the first time you hit the site.

Instead of me writing a long tutorial let me point you to great flash development site with free tutorials

http://www.flashkit.com/

;-)

Click on tutorials at the top and put in preloader in to the search box this should bring up a list of beginner and advance tutorial on building a preloader.

This should help with the playing of the movie for new visiters, the grachics and other elements will already be cache on there PC before they veiw it. Oh yea the javascripts are running just fine.

armorsix >:O>

 

[oldnewbie]

Armorsix,

Rohdem has already changed his concept, adding his buttons to his Flash movie. Good job! Anyways, I may be wrong, but I don't think adding a preloader would have made a difference in his first concept. Maybe Frontpage is at fault here!

And Rohdem... enjoyed your computer jokes! May want to add this one to your list:

http://www.oldnewbie.f2s.com/setupz.gif

;-)

 

[Rohdem]

Actually, it has a preloader on it. I don't know if it is working or not. ) Anyway, Oldnewbie is right, I changed my flash to include buttons. I think the problem was either with Frontpage or the javascript calls to 'shake' the browser. Anyway, thanks for your help guys.

Oldnewbie, that joke was great!!!!! LOL

I'll add a link to it on my site!! Mike Rohde
rohdem@marshallengines.com