11 replies to this topic

[vhortex]

In contrast to what was posted here, file size is not an issue as long as you load it in modular terms. Flash developers forgets the logic of loading flash items one piece at a time. I saw a lot of flash movies/softwares that are at least 80MB in size and yet they can load faster in term of user experience.

Here are the steps that they are doing:
1. instead of building 1 solid flash file, they divide it into segments and load those segments using a 1MB file shell loader.
2. instead of inserting a 10MB movie in swf format, they in turn convert the movie file into FLV (flash video), the one you are embedding was just an empty player which stream loads the actual movie.
3. while resolution is way important, people that loads larger flash files will load smaller resolution versions first and continues to load higher resolution piece by piece. this gives an impression that the flash movie was enhancing it self as time progress.

one big chunk of flash file, regardless that it have a preloader will still load slower and people will notice it, modular loading will make an appeal that the flash file have already loaded and will leave a "calibrating up" feel.

And one point of interest, modular loading indeed increase the total bytes that you are loading but people will ignore that.

NOTE: loading faster in terms of user experience means that the files load faster on the perception of your user but in bandwidth wise, they still load at the same time. streaming servers also help a lot, I saw an HD video roughly around 1GB and I was able to watch it with less stops on my regular 130kbps download speed. the video was a streamed MMA fight for review/editing purpose.

[mahesh2k]

By the way noticed one add-on for firefox, fasterfox. This speeds up the site loading on firefox. I don't know if the browser like chrome or opera needs it though. But you can spread about this add-on for those who are using firefox. It makes it easy to load multiple pages of same site.

Firefox has add-on called firebug on which Yslow is programmed. Yslow can figure out why your site is loading so slow. try that.