Help a noob please?

Hello

I was wondering if someone would be kind enough to help me, I'm basically trying to get an swf file to load AFTER the rest of my MySpace page has loaded.

MySpace loads the player/swf file along with my page, which slows down the whole page load to around 2 minutes (a blank screen being visible whilst loading). I would like the page to load, with a player, then either the option for the user to play the file or preferably the file to automatically play.

If it helps, the HTML code I'm using is:

<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowScriptAccess="never" allowNetworking="internal" height="300" width="400" data="http://www.path_to/MySlide.swf">
<param name="allowScriptAccess" value="never" />
<param name="allowNetworking" value="internal" />
<param name="movie" value="http://www.path_to/MySlide.swf" />
<param name="menu" value="false" />
<param name="quality" value="high" />
</object>

Thanks in advance for any advice...

Are there any timing parameters that are a possibility to use? So say without it your page takes 30 seconds to load, put a 30 second hault on it?

Hello kbergmann, thanks for your reply

Are you saying that I can apply some kind of time limit to the page loading?

How do I do this & how does it work?

Isn't there just some way I can have the page load, with a flash player, then the user clicks on a play to load the swf file, rather than the swf file loading with the page?

Swfs should stream by default. I think i would look at optimizing your flash file, maybe adding a loader or something else that requires a very low load time for the first several frames in the swf. I have a site that pushes almost 6mb of images and content per page all through Flash and the page still appears to load almost instantly. (page looks like its loaded even though its still transferring content in flash). It seems like a lot of work to try and delay an object from loading when it would be easier to fix the problem within the object itself.

A second option is to place all the page content with absolutely positioned css and then write the html page so your content loads in the right order (html loads top down). However, this solution is going to be very hard to implement within mySpace's limitations and it doesn't solve the problem that your swf content is much too big and not optimized.

Hi Graphixboy

Well this is now getting beyond ridiculous. I've been at this for 3 days solid with posts in 5-6 different forums!

So I have to re-optimze the swf file? how would I do that?

I created the file using flash slideshow maker. The SWF is a slideshow that's about 2mb in size. The program has no real settings for how the slideshow would behave with regards to loading (that I can see anyway).

Is there some kind of freeware flash building tool that will allow me to make a slideshow & allow me to set how it loads/works?

(your site sounds great btw!)

Well from looking at the site you provided, I assume that the slideshow is embedding all the content into one swf. The problem is that it doesn't look like its setting the swf up for the web as much as for something like a cd or desktop screensaver where load time isn't an issue.

Does it show a loader animation at all while the load takes place? If not I would try to figure out how to set that program to use an xml file and external images. According to the site it has that ability...



Unfortunately this is probably one of those "You get what you pay for" type things. It doesn't seem like the product does a very good job of building the swf. You may also want to check out SimpleViewer from Airtight Interactive. I does the same kind of thing but its a much better product IMO.

I appreciate your time & help my friend

I'm going to see if I can make it work via an xml playlist file

I'll let you know how I get on...

So I uploaded all my images to photobucket, created an xml playlist & then played the slideshow.

Now my problem is that instead of seeing my slideshow transitions, I see a blank screen with a loader in between each picture.

I think I'm on the edge of insanity, but I'm still hoping this is just a step closer towards the solution.

Heres a small version of the XML playlist:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<flash_parameters>
<preferences>
<global>
<basic_property movieWidth="420" movieHeight="300" startAutoPlay="true" backgroundColor="000000" continuum="true" html_title="MySlide" loadStyle="Pie"/>
<title_property photoTitle="false" photoTitleX="5" photoTitleY="25" photoTitleSize="20" photoTitleFont="Verdana" photoTitleColor="0xffffff"/>
<music_property path="" stream="false"/>
<photo_property topPadding="0" bottomPadding="0" leftPadding="0" rightPadding="0"/>
</global>
<control>
<basic_property showControl="false" showControlX="-30" showControlY="460" showPreviousButton="res/previous01.gif" showPreviousButtonX="50" showStopButton="res/stop01.gif" showStopButtonX="97" showPlayButton="res/play01.gif" showPlayButtonX="97" showNextButton="res/next01.gif" showNextButtonX="124" showSoundButtonX="182"/>
</control>
</preferences>
<album>
<slide jpegURL="thumbs/t_0001.jpg" d_URL="http://My_url/01.jpg"
</album>
</flash_parameters>

Any suggestions?

I should point out that I've also tried it with a transparent bg (backgroundcolor="")

Still same with same results.

ok so here's the real issue. The program that your using to build a slide show is either embedding all the images inside the swf (results in a huge file that takes forever to load on your page) or its using xml to list all the images and then load them when they are requested by the user (shows a loader and no transition).

The reason you don't get a transition is because the program doesn't build the swf very intelligently. Flash can't do a transition until all the image data is loaded. (You can't fade in empty pixels) The problem you're seeing is that the image isn't being loaded in the background and then transitioning in. Instead the transition is trying to run before the image loads and therefore you see the loader and not the nice effect.

I highly recommend the slideshow component I linked to earlier. Its well built and shouldn't have a lot of the issues your seeing. If you stick with what you have you're pretty much out of options and you have to decide if you want a long page load or no transitions.

Hi GB

I'm scrapping the SWF file & choosing your method.

I downloaded the simpleviewer, uploaded the player to a host site along with the XML playlist & used the following HTML code in MySpace:

<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowScriptAccess="never" allowNetworking="internal" height="300" width="420" data="http://www.path_to_player.swf?file=http://www.path_to_playlist.xml">
<param name="allowScriptAccess" value="never" />
<param name="allowNetworking" value="internal" />
<param name="movie" value="http://http://www.path_to_player.swf?file=http://www.path_to_playlist.xml" />
<param name="quality" value="high" />
</object>

I think the code is fine as I see 'Simple Viewer - Gallery Not Found'.

The problem must be the 'imagepath=' command in the xml playlist. The instructions say to specify a path to your image gallery if you do not wish to use the default path (which would be on my HD).

My images are stored on Photobucket. I specified the path to the directory of my images on photobucket ie: http://s86.photobucket.com/albums/my album/ & also entered the complete path for each image like so:

<image>
<filename>http://i86.photobucket.com/albums/01.jpg</filename>
</image>

Although I think the image path would be irrelevant if the album can't be found. I also tried it like so:

<image>
<filename>01.jpg</filename>
</image>

Still no joy.

So I tried uploading the images to 'Fileden' then creating an album which gives you a link which I entered into the xml playlist as:

imagepath="http://www.fileden.com/album/12345/12345"

ammending the xml individual image paths to:

<image>
<filename>01.jpg</filename>
</image>

Still resulting with 'album not found' message.

Is there a way I can have my gallery stored online & for Simpleviewer to succesfully find it? I'm wondering if Simpleviewer is only for files stored within the same directory as the player?