General Flash Site Question

Hello,

I have a quick question around building your flash site. I am building a few
sites. The first one I am working on now. I basically build a separate swf
for each page (home, contact, about us, etc.). I drop the flash into it's own
html page and link buttons within the .fla file.

However, I notice alot of people (not all) load external swfs into one page
(the URL doesn't change). I like this method and plan to use it to build my
second site.

My questios are:

1 - Is there anything wrong with having separate html pages with their own swf
(no loading externally)? I have used a preloader in those pages that take a
long time to load.

2 - When loading .swf files externally, do you put the preloader in the
..flv/.swf you are pulling into the main page. An example would be a photo
gallery. If I have a button for the photo gallery and I load it dynamically,
it will take some time to load. Do you just put a preloader in the photo
gallery .swf that you are loading?

Hope this makes sense. I am very interested in building flash sites. I just
want to make sure the way I am doing the work is efficient.

Thanks.

Why not just build the entire site in Flash? That way you could have a nav bar with buttons to call your separate pages in flash linked as named keyframes in your timeline.

Hey Ken,

Thanks for your reply. I guess that is what I am getting. So, in my current
site I have a swf for the home page (with navigation). I then drop it in an
HTML doc (I use Dreamweaver - home.htm). Then I create other swfs for the
other pages: contact, photos, about, etc). It works just fine but I noticed
that most people either build a SINGLE .fla and call out to those frames to
load a new page/images OR use a loader for external swfs.

Is my initial way OK for now or should I rebuild the entire site?

Also, if I am bringing in external swf or calling out to frames using
labels..........how do you set up the preloader? For example, If I have a
photo gallery button. And I call out to the photo gallery swf, where do I put
the preloader? I have seen sites where you click on a button for photos and a
preloader pops up as the photo gallery loads.

I hope this makes a bit of sense as I am fairly new to Flash.

Thanks,
Gabe