macromedia flash sitedesign: I'm designing a flash website using stopmotion photography. The main page is a
kitchen and when you click on an appliance, like the freezer, it opens up and
zooms in. Unfortunately, no matter how much I lower the quality of the
stopmotion images, they still load very slow. The funny thing is, once you've
already opened the freezer, if you go back and do it again, it happens nice and
quick. I created a preloader, but it didn't help. Why is this happening? What
can I do? Is my preloader mis-coded?

It is useful to make preloader "stop or wait" the application until ALL the
stuff needed loads into it (or download into browser cache of the client pc)
depends on connection speed.
Make it, that it loads all the pictures you need 'cause it is a very
interactive site (I suppose)
if you use jpg pics look at the size in MB that they take (there are
different kind of jpg's)-if they're large, you can make them smaller with
some programs (like IrfanView - just open them and save as jpg with quality
100)
maybe it is better to use png pics , they're sometimes 10 times smaller then
jpg and that gives you less time to load them in the site!

i sounds like your pre-loader isn't working the way you want it to. for
whatever reason (i couldn't say unless i dug into your code) it isn't actually
loading the animations that are taking so long to pop-up when you click on
whatever it is that launches them. your server might be slow, too. are these
external files you are loading? or is this all one big movie?

erik