Simple Preloader

In this tutorial, you're going to learn how to make a "simple preloader".

The person who's going to view your flash project must receive an indication that your flash file is being loaded.

Simple preloaders are useful with small-sized flash files.

Note: With big files, you should always use the "Percentage Preloader". A percentage indication gives the viewer an idea of how big the file is and whether he wants to wait for it to complete or not.

1:

Let's start by creating two scenes.

• Go to: Modify>Scenes. Click on the (+) sign. This should add a new scene to the existing default "Scene 1".

Fig 1

We're going to place the preloader on the first scene and call it "preloader". The second scene is where all your content goes, call it "scene". As shown in Fig 1.

When done with the renaming, keep the selection on "preloader" as that's the scene we're going to work on in the following steps.

2:

• Good, now click on the first frame and select the Text Tool (you can also press T on your keyboard).

Type "Loading" as shown in Fig 2.

Fig 2

3:

• Right-click on the second frame and select "Insert KeyFrame".

Do the same with the third and forth frames.

• Go back to the second frame now and add a dot to "Loading."
• The third frame has 2 dots "Loading.." and the forth has 3 dots "Loading..." as shown in Fig 3.

Fig 3

Good job!

Two more steps to go. :)

4:

In this step we're going to add an action to keep the "Loading" animation go in loop.

• Right-click on the fifth frame and select "Insert Keyframe"

(We're going to use this keyframe to add an action).

• Right-click on the fifth frame again, but this time select "Actions"
• Add the action shown in Fig 4.

Fig 4

5:

Now we're going to add an action that keeps monitoring your content whether it has been loaded or not, if so, then go and play the scene. If not, then keep on showing the "Loading" animation.

Fig 5

• Click on the first frame and add the actions as shown in Fig 5.

Note: ifFrameLoaded ("scene", 30) that number is equivalent to the length of your content, if your content is 100 frames long, then you should place 100 there instead. Meaning, if the last frame of the content has been loaded, then gotoAndPlay the first frame of the content.

That's basically it!

To test your movie go to Control>Test Movie, then go to View>show streaming.

For testing purposes, add some heavy content to your scene, just to be able to see the loading process easily.

Conclusion:

This flow chart should help you understand the looping process and the "if" condition, whether the scene has been loaded or not.

Thank you. Hope you enjoyed this tutorial. :)