FLASH: Optimizing loading of large movies

[Chris Wiggins]

I'm working on an intranet which uses flash & generator quite a bit. 


My question:


The home page recently became rather large (the swt is approx 180k) when 

the client

decided to add a slideshow of 8-10 bitmaps. The home page is very simple, 

really. 

If it didn't have the slideshow and if it wasn't a generator template it 

would be

around 30k. The slideshow is designed to stream (which it does, nicely, 

even over

a 28.8) and the navigation loads very quickly which is just what I want. 


The problem is that although the navigation loads very quickly even on a 

28.8 connection, it isn't actually "hot" or active until the movie 

finishes loading. 


Now, this problem isn't terribly serious to me on this project because 

it's an intranet which almost nobody will be using with anything other 

than a T1. However I'd like to know if there is anything I can do to 

force the navigation to be functional as soon as it's loaded & visible on 

screen.


The site can be viewed (for a short time) at: http://209.141.236.66/


Keep in mind that it is designed to be used exclusively on IE4 on PCs 

with 800x600 res & 16 bit color (I love intranets! Where else can you 

find out what EVERY user will be using?)


Any ideas about my puzzle are welcome, as are any general comments about 

the look or flash/shockwave functionality of the site. 





Chris Wiggins, Art Director


Braincraft Learning Technologies

chrisbraincraft [dot] com

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