- Designing Your Web Site to Be Modular
- Loading Movies or JPGs
- Task: Use Load Movie
- Determining When a Movie Is Fully Loaded and How to Unload It
- Task: Determine Whether a Movie Is Fully Loaded
- Shared Library Items
- Task: Prepare Items to Share at Runtime
- Task: Start Using a Shared Item
- Task: Update Shared Items in a Library
- Task: Share a Font During Runtime
- Linked Scripts
- Summary
- Q&A
- Workshop
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Summary
This hour you saw several ways to cut up your movies into little pieces. Such modularization can have performance advantages as well as productivity value. The perceived download time is reduced if users only need to download segments as needed. You and your team's productivity is increased by breaking a site into smaller files—not only can several people work simultaneously but you can impose consistent styles with Shared Library items. You also learned the steps necessary to modularize. However, the challenging and creative part comes as you decide when and where to modularize.
The first feature discussed was the loadMovie Action. This allows you to (at runtime) play another .swf on a level number or in a clip instance. You also learned about sharing Library items at runtime, where an .swf can act as a Library shared between several files or among several team members. A lot of upfront work is involved to get such a Shared Library built, but this time investment will be paid back in the form of greater productivity. You can share any kind of Library item, including a font. Finally, I pointed out that there's a way to store your scripts outside the Flash file (as a text file) so that you can share one script and make edits to it without constantly returning to Flash.