What is the best way to show a dialog or busy cursor for an AIR application that needs to do a bit of pre-processing before displaying anything? Otherwise, the user may think that the app crashed in the 15-25 seconds it takes...
+1
A:
I can't speak speak for AIR specifically, but on all the Flash pages, apps, and widgets I've written, I always include a preloader.
Here is a good example of a preloader that actually loads external content.
But if you're just doing heavy calculations and not loading any external data:
- Determine the total number of "units of work" that need to be completed (eg: if you have 100 rows of data to process, that's your total units of work)
- Display an animated "Loading..." MovieClip
- Start calculating and increment a progress count variable each time a unit of work has been completed
- When the progress count reaches the total, hide the Loading MovieClip
If you want to display a percentage loaded, calculate the following and feed it into a TextField inside your Loading MovieClip:
percentage = (count / total) % 100
Soviut
2009-01-31 04:56:56