This week, because my colleague Nick is out of the office, I have filmed a tutorial on how to add a simple rotating pre-loader in Flash using Actionscript 2. In this tutorial, we use Adobe Flash CS4, however the tutorial should be backwards compatible with most other versions of Flash.
Watch our video: How to add a Preloader in Flash Tutorial directly on YouTube
All of the supporting files can be found inside the ZIP file which you can download below:
Download The Supporting ZIP File
If you have any questions or recommendations on the subject of preloading in flash, please don’t hesitate to ask a question or leave a comment below:
Pretty Good video blog, I’m after a tutorial however that also has a number percentage of how much has loaded. Any ideas?
I have always wondered how to do that and found that the flash help isn’t that useful in explaining. Really well done on solving the mystery.
There are also some third party plugins that can be imported into Flash. This then adds an easy short cut to add pre loaders. You can also download pre made library files for adding pre loader animations.
Hey everyone, this is just directed at Jacob Richards. Here are some links to a tutorial one of my teachers made in one of my web design classes, it tells you how to do the percent variable on your preloader.
Part 1:
http://www.web.jatc-sandy.org/video%20tutorials/preloader1.html
Part 2:
http://www.web.jatc-sandy.org
/video%20tutorials/preloader2.html
it might be worth mentioning that the tutorial is for AS2 …. i found out the hard way in an AS3 document
Sorry about the confusion Darryl, I have added an annotation to the Youtube Video. Good observation.
Hello to all!I´m working on my flash site and a problem is that all off my layers have 1 frame and preloader scene have 20 frames.How can I fix this?I must put a preloader beacuse it take some time for load when people go on site.Tnx in advance!Hope that I will get reply!Cheers!
I forget to mention!Preloader keeps circiling!That is the real problem.
Hi Josip, the fact that your main Scene has only 1 frame shouldn’t be a problem. Try changing your Preloader’s Actionscript on frame 19 to this:
ifFrameLoaded(“Main”, 1) {
gotoAndPlay(“Main”, 1);
}
If you are having further problems, please let me know, and if possible, email us the .fla file
First, thank you ver much for your reply!I done that before but you now what?When it comes to main scene it only blinks and keep going circiling on and on.How can i fix that?
I fixed it!!
The problem was that on main scene i must enter gotoAndStop(1) not gotoAndPlay(1)Thank you very much on this nice tut!Best regards!Josip
I have one more question if you know that?
I´m using cute news script for my news.That script is php and can you tell me how can i put it in my flash site on place where i want?
Great tutorial!!! Being looking for something like this for a while. It was really helpful and easy, thanks
Hey,
I am trying to add a preloader to a photo gallery I made in flash, but I can’t get it to work. It is wanting to loop once gallery is loaded. An error in the ActionScript says undefined method of ifFrameLoaded.
Morgan, are you using ActionScript 2 or 3 ? Please tell us more about the problem.
Hey everyone! I have a very simple website which needs a loader. I did the tutorial but when I publish it and open with safari, the front page is there but the loader does not spin and nothing happens. It is stopped in the first frame? Would you know how to help me? I am using CS3, is that a problem, because I could’n open your CREARE flash files. Html and swf works fine, but not the flash file. Thank you so much!
Hi Heikki, do you have a link to your file? Or send across your fla and I can take a look for you.
Great tutorial guys, found you on you tube and have added you to my favourites. Will be checking your site regularly from now on. Thank you for the help.
Please HELP! I followed your instructions to the letter.. and it almost works but I realized my file is an actionscript 3.0 file… it gives me a
1093: Syntax error.
frame 19 line 1… error it plays preloader then my file but loops the whole thing..
Please help…. I can send you the fla if you want… Please help…
This code works great with AS2 but when i try it in AS3 I get an error on the Preload Scene
for action on Layer 1
**Preload, Layer ‘Layer 1′, Frame 19, Line 1 1086: Syntax error: expecting semicolon before leftbrace.
ifFrameLoaded(“Main”, 300) {
gotoAndPlay(“Main”, 1);
}
Can you guys Help me out here?
Great tutorial. I downloaded the zip file, but get an error “unexpected file format” when trying to open either of the unzipped fla files in Flash CS3.
URGENT!!!! Can someone help?
I am from Australia and I need to supply my multimedia assignment in 12 hours. It’s a 2.5 min flash animation and I have embedded a low quality 15 sec movie. The clip, which I made in CS3 Flash has a file size of 4mb and has very tight editing – certain frames need to sync with the music track. Of course streaming and file size is a problem so I thought I use a preloader to load the clip first. I used several tutorials to create a preloader and this one makes sense but I think it only plays the animation for the preloader and then jumps straight to the clip because when I replay it it’s still out of sync. No error messages come up.I double checked the tutorial, I added a couple of frames to “GotoandPlay” just in case, I have no idea why it doesn’t work.
I am totally panicked because the clip won’t work if not in sync. I am a photographer and don’t really know about action script 2 (in CS3). Has anyone any ideas what I can do?