Passing variables / accessing other swfs

Question

It has been years since I used flash, so I consider myself a
rank armature. I'm Using Flash 8 and would like the code to be
backward-compatible to ver. 6.
I have a big movie, with lots of images. I've comprimised the
image quality as much as I dare, but it still takes 20-30 seconds
to load (my client is in Paris, and claims to have the fastest
connection in Paris, but it takes more than a minute to load it
from there, even when loaded on his local server). I'm assuming
that the only way to achieve a meaningful decrease in load time
will be to split it up into smaller swf's, one mail swf, and each
sub-page in it's own swf, and have each swf loaded only when
needed. The fla can be downloaded here:
cjreynolds.com/fuda30.zip
The movie currently runs an intro animation, then when a link
is clicked, it loads different "pages" which consist of large movie
clips. These are contained in a MC called "pages", and are called
by manipulating a root variable called "level" - ie: "level = 1"
causes the MC at frame 1 of the "pages" MC to be displayed. (this
was an existing movie that I have been tasked with modifying).
#1 - Is it correct that splitting the individual pages into
different swfs the only way to lessen load time? I would welcome
any other suggestions.
#2 - If spitting the movie up is the way to go, I'm thinking
I need to replace the movie clips in the "pages" MC with swfs. How
do I tell each individual page to go back to the main (intro) swf
and load a different page? The main timeline contains animations
that "overlay" the sub-pages, creating a transision effect when
going from one page to the next.
Thanks for your help - you guys (and gals) have been a great
source of aid for me!
joe

Answer 1

Yes, _root is the wrong thing to use, and _global is never
good practice. I
don't use loadMovieNum - I'd use MovieClipLoader and it's
loadClip method to
load other swf's into target clips. You can then use
something like
this._parent to get to the timeline of the clip 'containing'
the loaded
clip.
However, I think your best bet is to probably use a singleton
class. That
way you have your main movie instantiate and set variables
within the
singleton - then any other movies can easily create an
instance (which will
be the same instance since it's a singleton) and get the
values you need.
Simple example:
class VariableHolder{
private static var instance:VariableHolder;
private var myA:Number;
private function VariableHolder(){}
public static function getInstance():VariableHolder{
if(instance == undefined){
instance = new VariableHolder();
return instance;
public function setVariableA(newA:Number){
myA = newA;
public function getVariableA():Number{
return myA;
So, in your main movie you'd do:
var myVariables = VariableHolder.getInstance();
myVariables.setVariableA(50);
And then in another movie you do:
var myVariables = VariableHolder.getInstance();
var myA = myVariables.getVariableA();
//will set myA = 50;
Because you're using a singleton - the second getInstance()
call returns
just the one class instance - held in the class' instance
variable. You can
have any/all movies instance the class, and only one instance
is ever
returned... Once you wrap your head around this it's a very
efficient way to
pass stuff around between various movies.
Dave -
Head Developer
http://www.blurredistinction.com
Adobe Community Expert
http://www.adobe.com/communities/experts/