Caching an SWF Across Website Pages

[striker9099]

Hey guys,

I am building a website in which I'm using a Flash swf for the navigation and a Flash banner (requirement by the client). Those 2 swf's will be shared on all pages. Is there a way to make so that when navigating from page to another the swf wouldn't be loaded again?

[lemon-tree]

I'm not sure if any browsers support caching of flash content, at least I have always noticed that it has to reload on every page load. In all honesty though, you shouldn't be using flash for a simple navigation bar anyway, as anyone without flash installed is just going to see a white box and wont bother visiting your site again. Pretty much everything you would possible want to do in flash can be replicated easily with CSS and HTML, which can be cached by the browser and will be available to pretty much everyone. Anything that can't be done so easily in Javascript in a fully cross-browser compliant way are the more annoying things like rollover sounds.
If the banner requires flash, then I'm not sure there is not a lot you can do besides just having it reload every time.

[striker9099]

Ok I will re-build the navigation using HTML/CSS. That's a wise thing to do actually. But I'm mostly worried about the Flash banner. Basically, the swf of the banner is an empty one, but it loads the images from an XML file and once all the images are loaded it starts the fade-in/fade-out effect. The point is, once the images are loaded the first time (say on the Home page), when I go to another page, will they have to be reloaded again or will they be cached and available to the swf?

[galaxyAbstractor]

Ok I will re-build the navigation using HTML/CSS. That's a wise thing to do actually. But I'm mostly worried about the Flash banner. Basically, the swf of the banner is an empty one, but it loads the images from an XML file and once all the images are loaded it starts the fade-in/fade-out effect. The point is, once the images are loaded the first time (say on the Home page), when I go to another page, will they have to be reloaded again or will they be cached and available to the swf?

That can be made using javascript and jQuery too, and I believe those are cacheable

[mefm2010]

Both swf's and images will cache. If you embed your swf using swfobject (javascript library) it's easy to provide alternative content for non-swf capable browsers (e.g a static image)

[scottietrek]

I think you can cache the page using some session/cookie work if you really needed to. Basically create a cookie and set the file as the cookie i know that IE 7 supported this as i had the same issue. also as stated before you can use java/AJAX to accomplish most things that are done in flash these days.

Hope i was not to vague

[striker9099]

Actually I gave it a try and found out that the images do get cached, but the swf reloads everytime. But I'm glad with that. I re-did the navigation using HTML/CSS though.