What is flash preloader?
Preloader is an animation or graphic progress indicator, which allows user to see the loading percentage of whole flash document. Usually loading animation is accompanied with numeric counting from 0% to 100%. See Demo
Why do you need preloader?
Preloader is needed to show that the website or image is being loaded in the background. Otherwise users do not have any visual indication of the loading progress and might think that website freezes, especially when having a slow connection or loading large resource.
Flash and Actionscript do offer a variety of methods to implement the preloader in your own flash application. At preloaderz.com we offer free and featured solution as Advanced Flash/Actionscript Preloader library classes.
This open source flash component allows implement preloader without a single line of Actionscript code.Moreover, using our flash preloader you may apply your own flash animation to indicate loading process. Our classes were tested and debugged to be effectively used in your flash development.
Free Advanced Flash/Actionscript Preloader classes library offer a number of useful features:
- preloader might be used as a component in design time. All you need to do is to drop one at the timeline of your flash document and set proper parameters
- preloader class can be created and used in Actionscript code
- user may use own flash loading animation, specifying it through parameter
- preloader can show progress of externally loaded images or swf files
- preloader dispatches ActionScript events, which you may simply handle and specify proper action when loading starts, loading in progress and loading is completed
- preloader can resize the loaded image automatically when it’s loaded
- user may play loading animation in two modes: progressive – animation is played according to the loading progress; and cyclic – simply looping any animation while loading is in progress
Why to write this everyday’s preloading task code yourself when there are featured and useful classes available just for free?
Download Now! Preloaderz.Preloader.v1.0… (31.5 KiB)
Try our free flash preloader right now and it will save you a lot of development time.
How do I get this preloaderz to work? The documentation doesn’t give an example. I tried dragging the component
to the stage and put the target “mymovieclip_instance”. I have a mymovieclip_instance at frame 2.
Hey People,
how do you get to use this preloader? If I do not know to write my own preloader (which is very simple and there are tons of tutorials on the web) than I really would need help in how to set up your preloader!
Write down a few examples pleaze!
I agree with the last two comments.
I could probably get this preloader to work but it would make it so much faster if you posted an example. I am wanting to use the preloader in a Flex project.
I gave it a try again, because I saw there was a tutorial now. But it is still not clear:
– where on the timeline I put my content that I want to load?
– I want to load a movieclip that I have on the stage – how do I do this?
– What do I put in the parameter “source”?
– What do I put in the parameter “target”?
Example my flash website (actionscript 2) should load different movieclips on stage when I enter the website. How do I preload these moviclips?
Can you make this clear in the tutorial? Maybe a flash *fla example to download.
how do i put the preloader to work on a program like pivot
this is bullshit!!!! i cant download cool stuff… dafak!
How do i implement this by drag & drop into flash cs4 for an existing portfolio
You need to load the classes inside the com folder in order for it to work.
Hi, is there a step by step tutorial on how to use this? I mean, for dummies 🙂
Thanks.
Okay, here is how I got the AS2 preloader component to work with one of the animations in the free 33-pack….
(all this is provided that you made it through the installation instructions for the free AS2 preloader component)
1) I created a new AS2 Flash file with the width and height dimensions of the Flash (swf) movie that I intened to preload (the movie itself was created in Flash 8, hence the necessity to use the AS2 preloader)
2) I opened the components panel (press Ctrl+F7), and dragged an instance of the preloader component into the middle of the stage (in the 1st frame of layer 1).
3) I also opened the “free_flash_preloaders.fla” file with the 33 different animations. Each animation is contained in its own folder in the library panel, and you just have to figure out which folder number corresponds to the animation you want to use. In my case, I chose animation “preloader 20”
4) Open the folder that contains your chosen animation by double-clicking it, and then RIGHT-click on the
“preloader # mc” inside that folder (the # of course represents the number associated with the preloader animation).
RIGHT-clicking on it will give you the option to copy the preloader.
5) Hope you still have the new Flash movie with the inserted component open, because after copying the animation out of the “free_flash_preloader.fla”, you need to paste it into the LIBRARY PANEL (!!! NOT !!! into the stage!!!) of the
Flash movie that contains the component. If the copy & paste is successful, you should now have the animation folder and the animation it contains, with everything you need, available and displayed in the LIBRARY PANEL of your new Flash movie.
6) RIGHT-click again on the “preloader # mc” (the one in the LIBRARY PANEL of your new flash movie), and choose
“Linkage” from the pop-up menu you’ll get. This opens the “Linkage Properties” panel for the preloader movieclip.
7) Give the preloader movieclip an “Identifier” name, and check the little boxes for “Export for ActionScript” and “Export in First Frame”). Click “OK” to close the Linkage Properties panel.
8) Now, on the STAGE of your new Flash movie (still in the 1st Frame of Layer 1), click on the preloader component that you inserted in step #2 to select it, and open the “Parameters” panel.
* Set resizeLoadedHeight and resizeLoadedWidth to the height and width of the Flash movie (or image) you want to preload.
* Set the skinSWF to the “Identifier” name you gave the “preloader # mc” clip that you copied & pasted into the library panel
* Set the skinType to either cyclic or progressive (I set mine to progressive)
* Set source to the Flash movie (swf in my case) or image that you want to load (if they are in the same folder/directory as your preloader movie, you should only need the NAME of the swf or image, i.e. “my.swf” or “myimage.jpg”)
I dont know how correct this next step is, but it seems to work.
9) For the” target” parameter of the preloader, I inserted a new layer into my Flash movie, ABOVE the layer that holds the preloader component. Into the second layer (also on the 1st Frame), I inserted a rectangle in the width and height dimensions of the swf movie I wanted to preload. I converted the rectangle to a MOVIECLIP symbol with the
name “container_mc”, and an instance name also of “container_mc”.
10) This “container_mc” is what I entered for the “target” parameter in the preloader component (back in Layer 1), and my Flash movie loads perfectly into the middle of the container after the preloader has run its course.
Okay, this is about as step-by-step as I can possibly explain it. No idea if those steps are correct, but it’s working and I hope they help and work for you too.
Thanks a lot Mountaingal for such detailed guide for Preloader component use in AS2.
Everything you described is pretty much accurate. As for ‘target’ parameter – it is indeed meant to specify the movieclip the external image/swf should be loaded into. If you leave it empty loaded image/swf will use the movieclip of preloader component as a container – so that loaded image will replace the preloading animation once it’s 100% downloaded.
Thank you, Mountaingal. It makes perfect sense and above all it seems to work. One detail related to step #9. While converting the rectangle to a MOVIE CLIP, you make sure you check one of those tiny REGISTRATION handlers. The position should be registered to the top-left corner, if the stage in Flash equals the dimensions of your movie or image you want to load.
Best,
A.
@MOUNTAINGAL
Your guide is ecellent,Just to mention that the rectangle is not required just draw a pixel inside the container and it works. However it should work with just an empty movieclip. But thanks people anyway for the free preloaderz and the guide.