This is where Flash can get complicated, when you
begin working with multiple timelines and symbols. You can see
how essential pre-planning becomes once your project gets more
involved.
As we have learned from movie clip symbols, Flash
can play separate timelines. But not only can Flash play the timelines
of movie clip symbols, Flash can also load other Flash movies
into its timeline and play those as well.
To unload a movie, simply add an action, either
a button or a frame action and double click Unload Movie, then
select the level of the movie that you want to unload. In our
example, we loaded the movie geturl.swf into level 1. When we
click Play again, we will want to unload the movie in level 1
before reloading it, otherwise we'll have movies
playing over top of each other.
What might you use this for? Look at the Flash site
for my company: whirld
new media and click on portfolio. Then click on some of the
different numbers of projects. Each time you click a button, a
movie is loaded with a thumbnail and description of that project.
When you click the next number, that movie is unloaded.
By loading each project description as a separate
movie, the overall file size of the Flash movie is greatly reduced.
This way, users do not have to load a section of the site they
might not be interested in.
