how do i insert a preloader ?

im new to flash, i tried searching around google and yahoo for preloader tutorials but i cant seem to follow their instructions, can anyone please advise me how or suggest a good tutorial link?

thanks in advance

i forgot to thank you man, i was able to make a preloader , thanks for the link

more than welcome

Sirkent: I'm pretty far along with my movie and didn't even think about a preloader! Is it possible to insert the preloader at this late date???

Is there a way to insert frames BEFORE the beginning of the movie after you've built most of it? And I'm assuming if it were possible that it would have to be done layer by layer, right?

no no no its really simple.

The way i would do it. and how i probably am for this next site im working on and are in the situation like you sorta.... id insert a new scene and then tell the preloader once its finished to go to the other scene.

if you have a preloader you use all the time that you usually put in the first frame. What you can do is either start a new flash thing. put that preloader in. Then highlight all the frames from your flash movie with all your interface and stuff. Right click it and select copy frames. then on your new flash document make a new layer and on that new layer right click its second frame and hit paste frames.

Moving frames is easy simply highlight it with the dragging of your mouse or hold down shift and select layer by layer with your mouse. Its up to what you wanna do.

I would not recommend copying all of your frames to a new Flash movie -It's messy and you lose a little presentation that simply makes the timeline easier to read (try it and you'll see what I mean). Instead, either follow master_phat's advice and insert a new scene before the first one, or select the first set of frames and press and hold F5. All the following frames will shift up for every time you press F5. If there was something in the first frame, like a motion tween, it'll get stretched, so simply move that over manually - far easier than trying to move the entire timeline!

Oh wow. It amazes me how inept I am at this!

Okay, the movie DOES start on the first frame, so doesn't trying to move everything forward 5 frames shorten the time it takes for the movie to complete? I guess it wouldn't be a big deal if the movie has a LOT of frames, but this one doesn't.

Not sure how to insert a new scene, or where to insert it. I guess Flash would have a tutorial on that in the software.

Whew... I'm such a noob.

adding frames doesnt shorten a movie length. Anyways I think he's talking about moving the frames up 5 keyframes. So your movie that starts on frame 1 would now start on frame 5. And im guessing he implied that you put a preloader that's 5 frames long before it? i dunno im confused myself.

o and to add a new scene go to insert>scene

I feel a tutorial coming on... 8)

heh. ill do the tutorial (will be good) if you can help me anaylize some javascript quiz. I'm trying to figure out the answers for a devious reason.... but i know nothing of javascript. If you wanna make a deal ill be more than happy... :wink:


my post about it is in the javascript section :wink:

But I've tried moving everything up 5 frames and it does shorten the animation transitions because it's reducing the number of frames in the transition by 5 frames.

Also, I'm still stumped by the preloader----the tutorial on this board is very detailed---but it's me, I don't understand fully.

So if I move everything up 5 frames and create a layer for a preloader, that should be on the layer that first loads, right? So if the movie loads from the top layer down, the preloader should be on the top layer, right?

As for the preloader itself---still stumped. I'm sure the lightbulb will go on at some point---some day. LOL :P

it shouldnt shorten it. your supposed to move the entire thing starting from frame 1 up to frame 5. The frames 1-4 then would be blank.

It does shorten it, though. Say your movie is 300 frames long, if you move the movie to the right 5 frames, at least in my case, the frames length from beginning to end is 295 frames.

Make sense?

select all the frames....
ie, click and drag from the top left all the way to the bottom right. then let go, and click and drag all the frames to the right 5 frames...

Sounds so easy. lol I think I tried something similar, but it still didn't add the 5 frames at the end. I'll give it another shot---thanks.