Module 9 Pre-loaders

This week’s task was to create a pre-loader for a website. I looked for pre-loaders online to download and edit, but each pre-loader I downloaded would not work. I opened the file and it opened it in the program “text” in a language that is not English. The only files of these flash pre-loaders I could download were “.exe” files which is usually for when you are downloading an entire program. I am not sure why this was happening, but I kept searching for flash pre-loaders to download and had no luck.

So, I just decided to make a pre-loader myself by following the tutorial on blackboard. I believe I followed the tutorial exactly but did not end up with the same results. I had different colors than the tutorial did and added a black background. My pre-loader looked completely messed up and was not doing what it was supposed to do. So, I made a few corrections and it worked. Except for one thing; it was not going to a page. The tutorial had it load an image on an ftp server. I made mine load a webpage I made last year. It did not load it at all and I do not know why, I must be missing some kind of script since I must have told it to load an image instead of just a URL. I tried fixing it and failed. So, it works, but it loads for a fraction of a second and nothing pops up after the pre-loader.

Pre-loaders are essential in web design. Many websites are meant to be simple and have few large images/files that slow down the loading of the page. But in more advanced times, there are many clients who demand for the highest quality images, graphics, and other media such as flash. In these cases, the pages take forever to load, but Americans and other people always have and always will hold time as one of their top priorities. If a page does not load within several seconds, visitors leave no matter what. So, these flash pre-loaders tell the visitors how close the page is to being loaded, gives them comfort that something is showing up on the page at least, and perhaps pre-loaders will become a form of entertainment themselves as many are in video games. I have seen pre-loaders be fun little games themselves. Lets just hope pre-loaders wont ever need pre-loaders themselves though.