File Size's

Quick post on file sizes. People don't realise how important these are, yet when they want to view something and it takes ages to load, they get frustrated and press the 'x' on the top left or right. Like people say the first 10 seconds of a presentation/peice of work is so key to the person being interested and intrigued into the work. If the work iteself doesn't load then the user will simply turn off and click on the next link. Potentionally, missing mind blowing work because the creator hasn't thought about file size. I think you can do an essay on this subject, so I won't bore.

Here is a great link that caluculates file sizes and loading time:

File Size Loading Calculater

I came accross this link as I was wanting to make a preloader for my quiz project. I don't want some one to play my quiz but have to wait for it to load, but not knowing that it's loading. So a pre-loader eliminates that by letting the user know that the flash quiz is working, but its loading, and will show how long you have to wait like an egg timer.

Preloaders are often an afterthought. You start off building your project and after working for some time you notice that the file size keeps growing. It would be tempting to just say "everyone's on DSL these days" but that's not the reality. Even if your users have DSL, they may not always achieve the theoretical maximum speed as promised by their internet provider. If their DSL speed is 768Kb, a one megabyte file will take ten seconds to download fully. Look at the wall for ten seconds. Count "onethousandandone, onthousandandtwo" and so on. Amazing how long ten seconds is, isn't it?

http://flashmagazine.com/Tutorials/detail/
how_to_make_a_custom_as3_preloader