and invisible * Cache bitmaps to improve performance This lesson will take less than an hour to complete. If needed, remove the previous lesson folder from your hard drive, and copy the Lesson10 folder onto it. Getting Started You'll start the lesson by viewing the finished movie, which includes a preloader similar to the one you created in Lesson 2. 1. Double-click the 10End.swf file in the Lesson10/10End folder to view the final movie. The preloader-a glass filling with fizzy water-appears. As the promotional movie for the Aqua Zero fizzy drink company loads, the glass fills and the percentage printed beneath the glass increases. When the entire movie has loaded, the preloader disappears and the movie plays. The preloader and promotional movie have already been created. In this lesson, you'll use ActionScript to load the movie and to run the preloader until it has loaded. 2. Open the 10End.fla file in the Lesson10/10End folder. You may want to compare your working file with it, especially when you're adding ActionScript. 3. Open the 10Start.fla file in the Lesson10/10Start folder. The preloader animation is already on the Stage. 4. Choose File > Save As. Name the file 10_workingcopy.fla, and save it in the 10Start folder. Saving a working copy ensures that the original start file will be available if you wish to start over. Assembling the Preloader Elements When you first open the 10Start.fla file, the bubbles in the water are animated, but the glass is always full. You'll add a mask that you can animate with ActionScript, so that it reveals the liquid in the glass as the movie loads. You'll also add a text box that displays the percentage of the movie that has loaded. 1. Double-click the glass on the Stage to edit the preloader symbol. The preloader symbol contains several layers that include the drawn elements and that animate the bubbles and fizz. When you select the liquid in the glass object, the Property inspector reports that its instance name is loadingBar_mc. 2. Double-click the glass on Stage again to edit the loader symbol. The loader symbol contains only one layer, which contains the water shape. You'll add text and a mask to hide the water. 3. Click the Insert Layer icon, and name the new layer Text. Rename Layer 1 Liquid. 4. Select the first frame in the Text layer. 5. With the Text tool, drag a text box beneath the glass. 6. In the Property inspector, select Dynamic Text from the menu above the instance name. Select Arial for the typeface, 16 for the text size, and a dark gray (#666666) for the text color. [View full size image]