gmg tutorials - flash intro design

Flash MX Skip Intro

A discussion on Flash intro design and how we can make it right.

01 Introduction
02 Server logs / How may we avoid the intro? / Why would we want an intro?
03 What should an intro do?
04 A clever skip intro button
05 Automatic skip build / Conclusion / About the authors / Copyright

Previous << What should an intro do?

A clever skip intro button

Clever? How? Our skip intro button will only show itself when the entire site intro has loaded. This is because our site intro is not wasting time; it is entertaining while loading important resources that will be used in the remainder of the site by exporting the shared resources as you may see in this image:

The method is to drop a button on to a layer in the main timeline and add your code to load the appropriate file when it is clicked. Ours looked like this:

on (press) {
        loadMovie("main.swf", 0);
}

Convert your button to a movie clip (F8) and give it an appropriate name.

Now add the following code to it:

onClipEvent (enterFrame) {
        if (_parent.getBytesLoaded() == _parent.getBytesTotal()) {
                this._visible = true;
        } else {
                this._visible = false;
        }
}

This code will make the button visible the instant the entire file has loaded; otherwise the button will be invisible. With this version, the file may be skipped as soon as possible. See the sample files intro.fla (160kb) and main.fla (127kb) for how this may be implemented.

With a few changes, you can make it show only if everything has loaded in the first frame (so that the skip intro only shows if the intro has already been viewed), forcing the intro to be viewed at least once:

onClipEvent (enterFrame) {
        if (_parent._currentframe == 1) {
                if (_parent.getBytesLoaded() == _parent.getBytesTotal()) {
                        this._visible = true;
                } else {
                        this._visible = false;
                }
        }
}

Next >> Automatic skip build / Conclusion / About the authors / Copyright