Can you rely on the browser for flv/swf datastore?

Question

Is there any way to download/preload 500mb-1gb of flvs/swfs for a flash application running on a website?

I have 15 flvs and 15 swfs and I want to preload all of them together(before my app begins) so that they load instantly(as if it were local) when I call each, after I have preloaded.

Since we're in the browser, isn't the only thing available for download the browser cache? And wouldn't the cache alone not work for these requirements(1gb, load as if local)?

Seems like I can only really do this with AIR.

Answer 1

This will definitely work in Air. I do this - one time per file only - and then load content from the user's documents directory.

The browser cache is definitely unsuitable for pre-loading a gig of anything.

In theory you've also got the local SOL (shared object) but that's more suited to data and I don't think you could serialise your content into that.

Answer 2

Preloading a gig of anything is probably not a good idea. Aside from really causing trouble for users who have monthly bandwidth limits (Greetings from Canada to Australia), I'm not even sure it's possible at all.

• The browser cache tends to be limited to somewhere between 5MiB and 500MiB (typically between 5 and 50)
• as I remember, Flash SOL Storage is limited to less than a megabyte per site by default
• HTML5 storage is also usually limited to protect the user
• Users with "SuperCookie-killer" extensions like BetterPrivacy for Firefox will have their SOL stores, HTML5 storage, etc. nuked on browser exit to protect against resurrection of tracking cookies.