Does my AS3 project need a preloader?

Question

I'm just starting to develop an AS3/MXML application on Linux using the command-line Flex 4 compiler. When running mxmlc -source-path=. MyApp/Main.as, I get the following warning:

/home/andreas/projects/as3/MyApp/src/MyApp/Main.as: Warning: This compilation unit did not have a factoryClass specified in Frame metadata to load the configured runtime shared libraries. To compile without runtime shared libraries either set the -static-link-runtime-shared-libraries option to true or remove the -runtime-shared-libraries option.

Another SO answer says that the solution is to link to my preloader. I don't think my project needs a preloader as it's pretty small; can I just ignore the warning?

Answer 1

If your project is really small (like less than a megabyte) and you don't think it will be used widely, a preloader isn't completely necessary. As Zhafur said people with a slow connection such as dial-up might be confused for a while but even so, small apps shouldn't take too long.

However, if you can be bothered, a preloader is probably a good choice for any Flash app embedded in a web page. And if it's small, you don't need anything fancy, just a simple percentage count would do the trick.

Answer 2

You should make a preloader, even if your file is pretty small.. the best if you have a preloader, because what's if the user has a very slow internet connection? Or lost the connection while loading.