Loading problems... 2

[URLJones]

Hi, I'm hoping someone can help. I have this demo that I am working on. I have a link on a webpage and, when clicked, will link to my demo. The problem is that when the link is clicked Explorer "freezes" until the demo is completely loaded. I have the demo opening in a pop-up window, but the pop-up window won't display until the demo is loaded. I've used a preloader as well, but, by the time the popup window has loaded the demo has loaded; thus, there is no need for the proloader to appear at this point.
If it helps, I am using a P3 and a network connection. Unfortunately I cannot show the demo or provide a link to it because the demo is meant for internal personnel.
If someone can help, it would be very much appreciated!

Thanks.

 

[oldnewbie]

Well with no link... Hard to say!

Did you try without a popup, to see if it then works?

 

[URLJones]

Thanks "oldnewbie" for responding so quickly. I did, however, try without using a popup. From what I remember, it worked in a similar fashion. My client would prefer to have it in a pop-up (without scrollbars, menubars, etc...). I'll just run through briefly what I have done in the demo thus far:

- Because nothing was showing up until the demo completely loaded, I thought of simply removing the preloader and puting it in its own file. From this file I would link to the main demo at run-time. Again, this had the same effect as before.

- So, as a result, what I have done is created a file that detects the player version. Once the version has been verified and approved, it loads the movie. This works fairly well, but, there is still quite a lengthy hang-up while the demo loads. Consequently, the preloading animation doesn't animate. The good thing is that the user now knows that a demo is loading, unlike before where nothing was showing up for a good 30 seconds to a minute.

There must be some way to allow the browser window to appear right away and have it display the preloader while the main demo loads in the background as if in its own thread of control. Unfortunately, since I am fairly new to this, I haven't been able to solve it. I have seen a few online demos which load fairly quickly. One in particular is the Sun Solaris flash demo. It works just as I want mine to.

One other point to mention is that the file is kinda large (ie, just over 3 MB) and might be too much for my P3 to handle. Because it is such a big file, the load time would severely decrease, and that is why I have resorted to breaking up the demo into seperate, linking, components.

Thanks again. If there are any other suggestions, I'm open to anything at this point!

-- URL

 

[oldnewbie]

Are there components, attached movie clips and/or sounds (with Linkage set to export on the first frame) or new fonts added to the Library, in your movie?
That might be your problem!

 

[pixl8r]

Definitely sounds like components to me too. Try using your bandwidth profiler in "Test Movie" to see how big your first frame is.

Wow JT that almost looked like you knew what you were doing!

 

[URLJones]

Thanks for telling me about the profiler. I had no idea that even existed... I took a look at the first frame of the demo under the 56K setting for the modem choice. I had the first frame at 256KBs. The frames after that were lower but, not by much. Each frame in the demo has a screenshot of the utility that we are demoing. What I did to, hopefully, cut back on the download time and file size was to use Generator objects to import the pictures at run-time (I'm using Flash 5). I also had some text from text files that are read in dynamically as well. Would these be what you mean by "components"? The first frame in the preloader was around 32KBs.

Thanks again,

--URL

 

[oldnewbie]

It may be a problem, but there are workarounds if in fact the delay is caused by any of the above mentioned elements... Can you confirm it?

 

[URLJones]

Well, the demo was quite large when I placed the images directly into the demo. The file size was about twice what it is now. Then I stumbled upon the Generator objects and used those. I know in MX you can load a jpeg through the loadMovie() function (I think...it's something like that). But, having version 5 I am reduced to using generator objects...unless someone knows of a more efficient, less-time-consuming approach.
I hope that answers your post oldnewbie...

--URL

 

[pixl8r]

Unless you have online generator it will not load the images at run-time. It will insert the images at publish time. You must have the server component installed for Generator to work run time.

That is to say that you will likely run into the same problem with file size. Sounds like you have a very big .swf.

I don't have Flash 5 on this computer, but couldn't you use loadMovie() to load a JPG on that version as well? My memory could be flawed.

Wow JT that almost looked like you knew what you were doing!

 

[pixl8r]

Unless you have online generator it will not load the images at run-time. It will insert the images at publish time. You must have the server component installed for Generator to work run time.

That is to say that you will likely run into the same problem with file size. Sounds like you have a very big .swf.

I don't have Flash 5 on this computer, but couldn't you use loadMovie() to load a JPG on that version as well? My memory could be flawed, but the Actionscript dictionary says you've been able to do it since Flash 3.

I think you should give it a try!

Hope it helps,

Wow JT that almost looked like you knew what you were doing!

 

[oldnewbie]

In 5 you can load a .swf that holds .jpgs, but not load .jpgs directly as you now can with the MX generation.

 

[pixl8r]

Even that would probably be better for you URL. Create a seperate swf for each image and use loadMovie to load the swf's when you need them.

Wow JT that almost looked like you knew what you were doing!

 

[URLJones]

Thanks guys. I think I might just try that (If I have the time...too many deadlines ). I'll let ya know if it doesn't!

thanks again,

--URL