I’ve created a website which contains flash animation as navigation through the website. It works just how we wanted it too with only a slight drawback of it being a large file so it takes that little bit too long to load.
My question is, is there anyway of creating a progress/loading bar to be placed on the appropriate pages containing these flash files to let the user know whats going on rather than a large empty gap in the page.
Not sure whether it would be an action or something else but would be very grateful for your assistance to help finalize the website.
It doesn’t have to be too fancy just a loading message or wheel would do, it’s just a few seconds too long in loading.
You would usually put this animation in the Flash movie itself. That
way it will take care of replacing itself when the resources load.
Anything you did in the page itself would be replaced by the blank
Flash movie the moment the movie started to load, so you couldn’t use
a placeholder animated GIF and the Flash Extras Action, because that
would either sit there and spin forever on iPads or other non-flashy
devices, or it would be immediately replaced at page load by the
loading (blank) movie.
But I have to ask: is there a particular reason why you’re using
Flash, with all its accessibility problems, in such an important place
as your site navigation? Remember, Google only indexes things it can
link to, and Google can’t read Flash, except at a very rudimentary
text-only level.
Walter
On Oct 14, 2010, at 11:04 AM, jemma wrote:
Hi Guys,
I’ve created a website which contains flash animation as navigation
through the website. It works just how we wanted it too with only a
slight drawback of it being a large file so it takes that little bit
too long to load.
My question is, is there anyway of creating a progress/loading bar
to be placed on the appropriate pages containing these flash files
to let the user know whats going on rather than a large empty gap in
the page.
Not sure whether it would be an action or something else but would
be very grateful for your assistance to help finalize the website.
It doesn’t have to be too fancy just a loading message or wheel
would do, it’s just a few seconds too long in loading.
The Flash is a major player in the website, we have a lot of products and wanted to display them in a nice clean slide show which made the site look ‘swish’ and easy on the eye but still give the user all the information they needed. We have thought about the accessibility problems and will probably create a second website that picks up the mobile side of web browsing and work around the problem that way. We’re also in the process of creating an app for the Ipad to show off our products that way too, so as a general website the flash limitations aren’t too much of a worry. We do have a navigation bar to get to each range of product then within that range is the flash slide that takes you further in, so google still picks up on us that way.
I had read about creating a pre-loader or something but wasn’t too sure how it would work within freeway as i assumed that the pre-loader would still have to load to a certain extent on the web page so wondered if there was another way around it but that sounds like it probably is the route i’ll need to take. Thank you for explaining it a little further for me, at least i can focus on the right direction rather than differing between the two
will probably create a second website that picks up the mobile side of web browsing and work around the problem that way
Remember that the iPad/iPhone redirect action can be used to direct visitors to non Flash content within the same site - no need to create a second site!
But I would echo what Walter says about using Flash for your navigation - not a great idea for such an important part.
There are other ways of getting the ‘swish’ you are looking for and still be accessible.
The other thing to consider is that visitors are impatient - if they have to wait for such a fundamental part of your site as navigation to load because the file is too big - quite simply they wont! And if you lose them then you wont get them back.
