Move Linked Assets in Flash
As any Flash developer will tell you, dynamically linked, shared assets (sound, movies, components) from the application library is a great tool. What stinks however, is the implementation. In order for the assets to be available, on demand, the application exports the content in the first frame of your movie. But what else do most people have in their first frames? That's right - preloaders.
By lumping your linked assets in the first frame of the movie, preloaders do not "engage" until after the items are fully loaded. If you have a lot of dynamic content, the result is a stuck playhead in the first frame, which can drag on and on, before the end user ever sees a preloader.
This has driven me crazy for quite a long time, so I'm pleased to report on a new application called Asset Mover by FlexiDev, which allows Flash developers to move their asset links to, say, a couple of frames after the first frame; thus allowing the preloader to actually preload all your content the right way. Windows version available now, Mac OS X coming mid February.
Comments
Hey, good eye--that sounds great. I have actually avoided using shared assets because of the added complexity, but I may have another look now.
Posted by: A. White at January 22, 2003 11:56 AM
Hmm...just checked it out, and it hosed some of the components I was using for interactivity when it exported. I think it disturbed the target path from the components to the targeted MC's. It seems to work as advertised otherwise, but this will require more investigation I think. At the least it is a bit troubling.
All the other loaded movies worked normally, so I would guess one tactic with this tool would be to load up shared assets in a dedicated movie that gets loaded into the main timeline. That would prevent any interference.
Posted by: A. White at January 22, 2003 12:13 PM
You mean, load it into a seperate movie, and put it in as a scene?
I'm kinda new at this...
Posted by: Paul at January 22, 2003 12:22 PM
This sounds great.
I have encountered problems in the past with this, unkown chunks of bytes at the start of my flash movie, even though I wasnt using any shared objects.
Perhaps this will fix whatever is intermittantly causing this problem for me
Posted by: Tim at January 22, 2003 2:41 PM
I haven't gotten into the file-writing issues for awhile, but I know that a key constraint here is that media which can be called at any time logically needs to be available before the presentation starts. If a media element is only in the timeline you can use streaming, but if it can be invoked at an arbitrary time it has to come first or you risk a burp during playback. This is why the tool is designed around the general case of protecting people from self-induced errors.
But if you know for certain that a specific presentation will not require particular media until a particular time, then I don't see why such manual SWF construction wouldn't be possible. One request I have is to please be certain to check such sites whenever there's a new Player release... it would be good to check it against upcoming players across browsers and platforms too. If you use a mainstream technique then odds are strong it will be internally checked, but if you use a rarer technique then it's good to check it against new builds yourself. Thanks! 8)
Regards,
John Dowdell
Macromedia Support
Posted by: John Dowdell at January 22, 2003 3:44 PM
Asset Mover 1.1 has recently been released which resolves component issues relevant to the discussion above.
Cheers,
Peter Crandall
FlexiDev Corporation PL
Posted by: Peter Crandall at March 13, 2003 1:30 AM
I thought you just dragged the library item to a spot off the stage in the frame where you wanted it to load...
Flash thinks it needs the asset, so sets the load order accordingly. Nothing appears on the stage, and no CPU load, since it doesn't actually get rendered.
Posted by: Brian at June 9, 2003 9:59 PM
