How to Add Preloaders to Flash Movies

Flash movies are a type of movie file created in Adobe Flash software, such as Flash MX 2004, Flash 8 and Flash CS3, and supported by the Adobe Flash media player. A preloader for a Flash movie is a small animation that plays on the screen immediately before the main movie begins, informing viewers that the movie is loading and indicating how much more of the movie is left to be loaded. If you want to add a preloader to your Flash movie, you must add a few additional frames to the movie timeline.

Things You'll Need

• Adobe Flash

Instructions

1. Add two layers to the Flash movie project. Layers can be added by going to the “Insert” menu and choosing “Timeline” and then “Layer” or by right-clicking on any layer in the project and choosing “Insert Layer” from the menu that comes up. Name one layer “Preloader” and the other “Actions.\"

2. Click on the first frame of the “Preloader” layer and enter any text that you want for your preloader into the design pane of the Flash window. Appropriate text for a preloader could be “Please Wait While Movie Loads,” or simply “Loading.”

3. Create four additional frames in the preloader layer by pressing “F5” four times. Click on the second frame and, in the design pane of the window, add a dot after the text you entered. Click on the third frame and add a second dot next to the first. Then, click on the fourth frame and add a third dot after the second.

4. Make the preloader layer loop so that it replays continuously until the final frame of the movie is loaded by double-clicking the fifth frame and adding the code to return to frame one. The code to go back to frame one of the layer is “gotoAndPlay.”

5. Double-click the first frame of the preloader in which you entered the original text, switch to the “Actions” tab and type the action code that makes the preloader play before the movie and end when the movie begins. The code for this action is: “ifFrameLoaded (“end”) { \\ “gotoAndPlay (“start”); \\ }” and each “\\” in the code begins a new line.

6. Begin your Flash movie after the last frame of the preloader. The main movie won’t begin playing until it has preloaded and the preloader animation has stopped.

References

• SmartWebby: Create a Simple Flash Preloader Using Basic ActionScript
• Entheos: Simple Flash Preloader
• Flash-Creations: Adding a Preloader