Help with Logical Order Of Page transistion or preloaders

This is not a post on how to make a page transition or a preloader, I have studied countless tutorials on how to make them unfortuntaly they were just tuts on how to make them not how to implement them, logically.

The way I want to use them is say on the flash website I'm making for each page of the website Im going to make a seperate swf file. for example I have a swf file for home page, another for another page and so on and so on.

Now is it best to make a preloader/transition effect and put it in those swf files or is there a more effecent way of putting it in the main swf file that is pulling in the external swf files making it so you only have to design the preloader/transition effect once. This way seems the most effecent but the one that confuses me most as to where to put it on the time line.

I should mention for most of my project I plan to bring in data dynamicly via php so most likely I have a the page transition go off first then show a preloader letting user know its loading in the data as well as the swf file its using. Does that make sense?

Anyways I'm looking for tips and advice on where to properly put your transition/preloaders on your time line.(this is assuming your pulling all your pages info into one swf file).

Thank you for your time to read this.

Cannot say i have ever put a general pre-loader in a main flash file for others to feed off. I import all my flash using a javascript file: and link it to my pages with Script tags. Where the flash is all i need to put is the flash ID because i use div classes. Quite clean.

It may be more confusing than actually help to add a preloader in a main file.

yeah that sorta what I'm trying to get at I want to load my individual pages into the main flash file. Meaning My main flash would just be basicly the interface with the buttons and layout and what not.

Then when they click to view a new section say the current section folds down and preloader starts loading in the new info. I can figure this out if I was making each page a different flash page but im going for making everything in one flash file to learn that style of design so to speak.

Thats where it gets tricky for me the best way to make the page transition start closing the current page then the preloader start then a new transition to open up a new page. Reason for the loader would be cause I possibly be loading info in externally from an xml file or database etc, as well as the swf file. Does that make sense?

ok so just to clarify your loading external swf into an interface swf using actionscript correct?

Use the movieClipLoader class that is built into flash because it has what are called callbacks. build one loader animation one out transition and one in transition.

This is where the callbacks come in handy...

- onLoadStart (fires when you call a new file to load) inside the onLoadStart call the code to transition out the existing content and turn on the visibility of the loader.

- onLoadProgress (fires continuously while the content is loading). Inside here you want to call updates to your progress bar

- onLoadComplete (fires when all the file data has been loaded into flash) In here you want to run your "in" transition and hide the loader.

look up any of those in the flash help and you should get a pretty good explanation

That helps sorta, I sorta know how those work but i guess what Im asking is where the most logical place to put these. To make more things clear in my main flash file it has the main interface and some frame labels sepreating sections ie home, about, contact ect.

So you got your section divided up and when the user clicks to those sections. I would have a actions script at that section run your suggested way of using the movieclip class, and say have the preloader in say one movie clip to fire off when onProgress load is called. And respectivly have the same for transitions have in a movie clip and in that movie clip have a in and out section and that fires at the appreate time? If this is what your refering to I would put these at each section of my time like one in a action script layer for home another for the other pages etc etc?

all three of those mc's need to exist for the entire timeline if your doing it that way.

make a new layer with a keyframe on frame #1 create your movieclip (loader, transtion, etc) go to the end of your timeline and hit f5 to extend the frames to the end.

turn the loader on and off with _visible = true/false in your actionscript...

thanks graphix boy, then I'm on the right track, thats how I'm trying to work it. I just thought maybe I was over thinking it which makes it seem harder then it really is. But I think I'm figuring it out.

Thanks again for your tips