Matter of Taste

[Allen]

I have heard two sides to this so i am asking for all of your expertise on this matter -

What is a better way of bringing external .swf into a movie - using loadMovie or tellTarget?

I had one person tell me that loadMovie is old news and tellTarget is the only way to go.

Any advantages or disadvantages to either?

just wondering!

[lostinbeta]

Believe it or not.....tellTarget was deprecated (fazed out). loadMovie is the way to go now. It allows you to preload each section, making your entire movie take less time to load.

loadMovie is much more effecient than tellTarget. And since starting with MX, the tellTarget command doesn't even exist anyways (well it still exists, but that is only to read Flash 5 files in MX and have them still work).

Not a matter of taste.....loadMovie is the most efficient way to go.

[Allen]

That is something i have not even considered - Having a movie preload in the background is a great idea.
Is the coding difficult to have movies preloading in the bacjground and become visible say when the user clicks the portfolio section.
Typically I just wait till a button is pressed and then have a preloader movie kick in till the .swf is loaded then it plays!

[lostinbeta]

What I do with loadMovie is put a preloader on each seperate .swf so that when I click it to load, it shows the preloader then the content.

If you preload movies in the background, it would be the same as preloading it all in the beginning, as if you were using tellTarget. This is very inefficient. It is better to load each movie seperately.

[Allen]

Great! That really sounds like the way to go with this.
What I am doing is working on building a full Flash site but to keep downloads small I want to break it up into byte size sections (no pun intended!) so it is very fast and streamlined.

[lostinbeta]

Then loadMovie is what you are looking for.

An example of loadmovie can be found at the EVERY SO POPULAR www.2advanced.com. All of their areas are loaded seperatly, from their navigation, to their news, to their main content. And their site loads fast because what isn't being used, isn't being loaded.

So if you don't visit the accolades page, that doesn't load, but if you used tellTarget, that would HAVE to load no matter if it was going to be viewed or not.

Always glad to help:)
Shane (lostinbeta)

[Allen]

That is a great site ! Thanks for the link that is exactly what i was after!!

[lostinbeta]

Yes, that is a great site, but many people try to copy their methods.

You will see them mentioned a lot on this forum and you will see many links to sites that try and look like 2advanced. My advice.....be original.....original is always great.

[Allen]

I totally agree.. I meant I am after the functionality.... I already have the graphical design elements and page layouts with artwork ect. for all the sections I have. I just needed a great method to load it into the browser as streamline as possible.

[lostinbeta]

I wish you the best of luck in your journey Allen. Keep on Flashin (not pervertedly......well....you know what I mean, I hope):)

Shane(lostinbeta)

[Kitiara]

I'm joining this conversation a little late, but yes, thankfully tellTarget() has been eliminated in MX. It took me a little while to realise this, since I got bought the Studio suite and anyone who's seen the 'manual' for this will know it gives about 20 pages to each program which is no help to anyone.

loadMovie() is definitely the one to be using, if only because the other doesn't exist any more. It's also a good idea because it means that instead of loading one gigantic movie, you can load bits at a time, and only the stuff the user wants to look at. :)

[eki]

Hi,

Tell target died with the 'slah syntax' and the old good Flash4, didn't it?

Cheers

SHO

[eki]

Sorry,
I meant 'SLASH syntax'

cya

SHO

[Bezzer]

eki, dont you mean DOT syntax? like instead of using a tell target u would use _root.mc.something._x = number... oh well tell target is old and was really left behind with flash 5. whoever was telling you that telltarget is the only way to do wot ever u wanted to do is worng...oh well

[lostinbeta]

I think eki meant that the Slash Syntax went out the same time as tellTarget did. But actually, tellTarget was still fully in use with Flash 5, where I believe the Slash Syntax was left behind at Flash 4.

[Bezzer]

yeah u could still use tell target with flash 5...never heard of slash syntax before... sounds scary hehe oh well

[lostinbeta]

Slash syntax wa using "/" and "../" as locators instead of _root.holderClip.myClip it would be something like ../holderClip/myClip. I think that is how it goes, I never used Flash 4, so I have no clue. I do know that the "/" and the "../" are used in HTML also:)

[Bezzer]

yeah thats more like an adress... the ".." is the root directory, and the shalshes tell it were it is.. its more like folders and subfolders with that...hehe :)

[lostinbeta]

Yep, exactly. I think it was found to be inefficient so they started using dot syantax.

[eki]

Hi,
Yes lostinbeta, that what I meant. thx

tell target still worked in Flash5 but macromedia recommended to use 'with' instead.

I, ersonally didn't use any of them as in dot syntax there's not need for neither of them.

(OK, 'with' is usseful to alter several properties of symbol but I don't like it using it. It's a matter of taste

cya

SHO