I have a gif anmation built in Fireworks, this runs fine on broadband but its really, really slow on a dial up connection. ([url]http://www.zytronic.co.uk/touchscreens_zytouch.htm[/url]). Is there anyway to include some pre-load code which loads the full animation in the background but all the user would see is a ‘loading bar’. Or would this be btter built in Flash to try to reduce the size and loading time.
First of all: technically, the animation is good. You reduced it considerably by using the transparent color as much as possible.
Preloading would be possible but I think, it wouldn't make sense. If I had a dial up connection, went to a site and had a "loading" message on my screen not disappearing for two minutes or so, I would just close that window.
The only way to reduce the gif's size would be to reduce the number of images. The reduction for people on dial up would have the effect, that the movement would no longer be fluent.
There is a way to preload an image that does not have a loading bar. It is this:
<script>
image1=new Image();
image1.src="img.gif";
document.img_form.image.src=image1.src;
</script>
If you put that at the top of the page and change "img.gif" to the name of your image and the form name and image name to the correct names, it will be the first thing the computer loads. That way, it seems to load faster.