Preloading multiple dynamic images

Question

I've searched this topic for hours with no luck. Basically I
have an XML file with a description and the url of multiple images.
When I play the flash movie the nodes of the XML are loaded into an
array and then each jpg is then loaded and attached to a movie clip
along with the description using a for loop. The problem I'm having
is that when making a preloader it only preloads one of the images.
OR if I use an external preloader, the swf file is preloaded but
none of the images are. Is there a way that I can preload all of
the images or preload each movie (with the image and description
attached) in the for loop? Thanks!

Answer 1

How odd is that. The createEmptyMovieClip() method of the
MovieClip class was available in Flash 6 (Also known as Flash MX).
It is true that the MovieClipLoader class was not available until
MX04.
And as Kglad said, there is no way to load things without
loading them into some kind of target. So you can load into
movieclips that are hidden or something, but cannot load into
movieclips that don't yet exist.
I tend to think of this classic problem in a slightly
different way. To my mind the preloader isn't there to necessarily
show how many bytes have been loaded and how many remain. I tend to
think it is communicating that progress is being made –
variable internet traffic, server load, etc. can mean that the
datarate will fluctuate. So if you are loading several files that
are roughly the same size (say within an order or magnitude) just
advance the preloader for each file loaded.
Say you were loading 9 files total, then each file loaded
would be about 11 percent (file percent = 1 / total number of
files).
Just a different way of thinking about it. Maybe it will give
you some ideas.