Hi All,
I had posted this issue previously on the VSD forum.
I'm developing a website under VSD that has a banner produced with Firestarter that has 9 images that fade in and out. I have uploaded the trial site which can be seen at:
balingupheights.com.au
I would like the images to fade in and out continuously, rather start over. It also looks like the banner re-draws itself when you click between pages, looking very clunky. I don't think it's an issue with the image sizes, (but could be wrong
) they were resized in Photoshop to be web suitable, around 130kb each. It seems to be something related to the way the flash movie has been constructed.
Any tips appreciated.
Thanks - Brian
Brian Vanallen
Balingup, Western Australia
My website and business - www.balingupheights.com.au
'May the fresh sprinkle of care snow down upon you'
Bjork
Hi Brian,
This will cost you a weekend for two ;-)
I cant see the issue. The 9 images fade in and out. At the end of the 9th image it loops back to the first image and starts again. Isnt that what you want? It looks good.
There could be a time distortion I'm not sure?? What you might be wanting is to have your movie end at the completion of the last image fade then loop back to the start? You can do this by cropping the movie size with the left blue arrow button in the project properties dialog box. It will shrink your movie frame by frame.
I might be on the wrong track here. Let me know.
The banner flash seems to load ok but the background colour seems to lag behind. It's always going to be tricky having a 9 image flash on every page.
Why dont you just use the static images on the subsequent pages instead of the flash banner? Each page can have a different image from the 9 used in the flash. I dont believe you will lose anything. Those photos are great.
In terms of the site, your menu seems to be corrupt on the different pages. You could have legacy images or data sitting behind the menu, which I have done before when building. What I have found that works is to create one menu for all pages. This way you only have to get the menu right once, then as you make a new page, use the Home page or an existing page as the starting point or template for all new pages.
This should reduce loading time as well as the menu is calling the one set of images on each page load. It might mean making your menu buttons smaller.
good luck with it.
***********************************************
Coffeecup fan and user
http://www.tigerpawsoftware.com.au - developed in VSD, Flash Menu Builder, Web Form Builder
http://www.ccservices.net.au - in beta - VSD, Flash Firestarter, Web Form Builder, Shopping Cart Creator
GIMP fan and user - best free image manipulation software there is.
First of all it loads very quickly for me, but as I mentioned load time will differ from user to user based on the factors I mentioned in the post in the VSD thread:
Are you saying you want it to run CONTINUOUSLY and not hafta start over each time someone loads a new page? OR are you just saying you'd rather there not be a delay when it restarts?
The speed at which the flash animation loads has to do with the speed of your internet connection, the speed of the server that your site is hosted on, and the size of flash animation. Very unlikely the prob is with your web host since ur not online yet
, so I would check the size of your images to be sure they aren't too large. I would also check to be sure there isn't a gap at the beginning of your Firestarter animation. I would also move this forum to the Flash Firestarter section and not VSD.
If you still have trouble, I would be happy to take a look at this for you, but you'll hafta give me something to work with
Best wishes.
If you want the graphic to be continuous and not re-load each time the user clicks on a new page you're going to hafta structure your site differently. Users will stay on the index page as they navigate your site, and each time a user clicks the pages will load underneath the Flash Firestarter graphic in their own frame.
Chad Spillars
"Look I finally made myself a signature!"
Users will stay on the index page as they navigate your site, and each time a user clicks the pages will load underneath the Flash Firestarter graphic in their own frame.
So what change do I need to make to the sites structure to have this happen. Based on the comments received I'm going to reduce the number of images, say to 4, which should assist in the load.
Brian Vanallen
Balingup, Western Australia
My website and business - www.balingupheights.com.au
'May the fresh sprinkle of care snow down upon you'
Bjork
You'll probably want to make it a hybrid site, combing flash and html.
One way that you could do this is to use frames. Your flash menu would be in frame1, and your HTML content in frame2. This way, your index page (which contains your flash animation) would not refresh, but only frame2, which is the page content. I'm not sure exactly how to do this because I haven't done it before, maybe google it, or post your question in the developers forum.
Of course with frames you may run into some search engine issues.
Chad Spillars
"Look I finally made myself a signature!"
