conceptual inertia

Ideally, your application should not need a splash screen because its load time should be nearly instantaneous. However, it’s not always the case. Updating the user about the progress of initialization is desirable. The ability to entertain the user at the same time is even more desirable. Most splash screens are static bitmaps. Some applications echo textual updates about which modules have been loaded or what systems have been initialized. This text typically flies by very quickly on-screen and may be echoed to a log file. What happens if we use Flash as the basis for a splash screen?

Today’s Solution consists of a C++/CLI class library containing a Flash splash screen class. A C# Windows application is used to test splash screen functionality. Please note that simply copying an existing Form (ie. the FlashForm in today’s download) between projects is not recommended because you’ll run into a lot of errors. Ultimately, it”s faster if you create the Form in the target project and then copy ‘n paste portions of the code over (rebuilding along the way).

Instructions on how to setup a ShockwaveFlash control can be found here.
The code for using Flash as a splash screen (including the .fla) is available for download here