Add a preloader to an existing Flash movie

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Basic Preloader

Step 1: Preloaders are a good idea for movies over 40kb displayed online, although not necessary for movies displayed locally, on an intranet or cd-rom presentations. Your goal is to hold the user's attention until your larger movie loads, so your preloader should be relatively simple and repetitive. To add a preloader to an existing movie, open any movie in Flash and create a new scene using 'Insert | Scene'. This will be your preloader. Rename scene 2 to 'Preload'. Then create your preloader animation.

Step 2: Change the order of your scenes by dragging 'Preload' to the top using 'Windows | Panels | Scene'. Next you will need to tell the preloader to advance to the movie once it has loaded. Select the first frame of 'Preload' scene and put in this code substituting the last frame number of Scene 1 for the number of frames loading. Change it for the number of frames of your own movie:

ifFrameLoaded ("Scene 1", 111){
gotoAndPlay ("Scene 1", 1);
}

Step 3: To keep the preloader looping until the movie loads, select the last frame of your preloader and put this code in for the current Preload scene:

gotoAndPlay ("Preload", 1);

Test your movie to make sure the preloader is working. Preview our live example here. There are several ways to create a preloader. This is just one way to create one for an existing movie.

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