Alternative ways to load Flash website

[AbromPhoto.com]

Hello, I have created a fully Flash website and as I continue to add images to
my swf file obviously it is taking longer to load the site. I think I have
created a pretty slick and straight forward preloader, but as I continue to add
images to my site it will force the user(s) to wait longer and longer for the
entire site to load. Where I live and work I have a very fast connection speed
(20 MB/s +) so my site loads very quickly, but when visiting a friends place my
site seemed to take forever. Instead of creating a low bandwidth version I
want to keep what I have.

My main question- Is there a way I could load the entire site up front to a
certain point (say 25%) and allow the user to begin to navigate through the
site and anything that hasn?t finished loading yet will just continue to load
dynamically (or on demand once the user selects a certain image). The user
could see the progress of items loading as they navigate around.

My website is: http://www.abromphoto.com. I run a photography business and am
a beginner with Flash, but understand web technology. My portfolio section of
the site is about 90% of my content. I would love for images to load
dynamically as the user begins to view images that have already loaded. Or,
possibly display all thumbnails for my images and then load the particular
image on demand once the thumbnail is clicked (so if they go back to that
image, it is already loaded). I honestly don?t know how to search for this
kind of thing.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[NedWebs]

Preloading is always a good thing when you have a sizeable site. As far as
quitting at a certain percetile, it can be a gamble. The on-demand route would
be a good approach where it's practical... but if you end up on-demanding
everything, it can be disruptive to the user's viewing pleasure. You could also
consider making separate swf's for different sections and loading them as
needed, possibly with some lightwieght loading-time eye candy that makes it
seem like more of a transition than a waiting period.

[doghouseJim]

You should heed NedWebs advice and on top of that I'd like to know if you are
optimizing your images? If not you can use Photoshop, Fireworks, or some other
software that handles graphics and optimize for the web you can often get
images down to about 10% of their original size without much degradation of the
quality.