How have you set up your site?

[ChillinTheMost]

When setting up a section of your site, what's the best way to go about it?

For example, if a site has multiple pages in a section, and you want to send them to the next page that has new images and text, how would you do it? Use dynamic text? Movie clips? Or just send them to anoter frame?

[Digitalosophy]

depends on the file size of you pages, if they are small you can use attachMovie, if they are big you might want to use loadMovie.

i don't like using the timeline to send users to diferent sections

[The_Vulcan]

Why is it that no one seems to use scenes ?

Other than the entire movie has to load.....

[Digitalosophy]

I hate scenes, there is no use for them in my mind. only in animation, and even that, by loading movies you are able to keep file size down, and i feel you have more control of your flash movie

[The_Vulcan]

I must not understand how the loadmovie function is different to scenes....

I would have thought that one movie with different scenes would have had a smaller file size, as objects are often reused.... In a movie with scenes the library of objects is loaded once, but if you loadmovie, wouldn't you be loading stuff that you may have already loaded ?

[ChillinTheMost]

Bamb, you're original file size would actually be longer up front, but smoother afterward. And Digitalosophy, it would suck for a user to keep seeing "loading" messages after every time they click something. How is that avoidable?

If you're not going to multiple frames in the timeline, what kind of dynamic text are you calling?... TXT files or XML? And is there a way to load other movies (sections) in the site while they're surfing??? So for example, while a user is surfing my "Portfolio" section of my site, can I load other areas like "Services" & "About" in the background? Or is that just a shizzy way to go about it?

I'm trying to optimize my latest project and I'm not sure what "the experts" are doin'.

I'm using "load movie" for each SECTION of the site I'm going to. (Each section contains multiple pages) For each page, I'm using XML to call the text and corresponding image. But what sucks about XML, is it's harder to call javascripts, and the formatting bites (fonts, styles, colors, etc).

I could use some advice.

[The_Vulcan]

ChillinTheMost

ChillinTheMost I would have to say that you are more advanced than me so I doubt that I could help you……

So I will just give a piece of my mind.


One thing that annoys me about flash sites is the loading of content….

You WAIT for the intro movie to load.
You WAIT for the home page to load.
(click on portfolio)
You WAIT for the portfolio to load.
(click on a piece of work)
You WAIT for that to load.


If I was on something other than dial up this may not be so annoying, but in Australia DSL connections are just starting to come to the home market, and they are still expensive. I hate going to some sites, where you are for ever waiting for the content to load. I find myself wondering off to another site while I am waiting for rubbish to load, eventually I open the site again, look at one piece of work, then have to play the waiting game……. Because of this, sites that are forever loading content don’t get as much of a look…..

To stop people going back and forth, over and over, and forever waiting, I always used one file, with scenes to keep the timeline cleaner…. Myself I would rather open a site, wait 10min’s for the preloader to load everything, then come back and enjoy the entire site… But these day its seems to be, wait 2 min’s, look at something, go away for 5, come back again, go away again…. Pffft….

If I ever put up a site, there will be one preloader, one sound to get their attention when the entire site has loaded, and that is that…

(also hate people that use a sound loop on their preloader, without the option of turning the sound off… very annoying)

As for the loadmovie / scene debate…. I am only now finding problems with scenes (because I am only now starting to use a lot of script), in that changes you make in one, do not carry over to the next….. Although I haven’t tried I believe that variables can not be passed directly to other scenes…
(if someone know otherwise please tell, and how)
I tried Linkage but it didn’t make a difference, although I may have done something wrong.

As for your loading of movies…… conceptually I see nothing wrong with loading your movies in the background, and wish more people would do so…..

I am thinking that on home page you have load portfolio, if (its loaded), load contact, etc… If you attach load movie to a button, it would just load that section if it hadn’t already been loaded….

[Digitalosophy]

attachMovie wil solve almost all your problems in this case