AS3 Shared Object slows swf down and makes webpage unressponsive

I have a swf that I would like to cookie to control the frame the user see's depending on whether it is a first time site visit or returned visit. My code is below - it works, it doesn't bring back any out messages however when I load the swf into my site that uses this technique the page becomes extremely slow and unresponsive - can anyone help out with any reasons why this may occur?

var my_so:SharedObject = SharedObject.getLocal("visited", "/");

if (my_so.data.newVisitor !=开发者_JAVA技巧 undefined) {
//object exists: return user
this.gotoAndPlay(2);


} else {
//object doesn't exist: new user
my_so.data.newVisitor = "no";
this.gotoAndStop(1);
} 

Many thanks in advance Rachel

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SharedObjects in general are extremely slow in Flash. That being said, there is no reason why it should be slowing down your entire site after it has been used.

When writing to a SO, you have to use flush() to tell Flash to actually write the data.

my_so.data.newVisitor = "no";
// Write the data to disk
my_so.flush();

Another thing to try would be to actively close the connection after you are done with it. So after the else statement you would add:

// Close the connection
my_so.close();
// Clear pointer for GC
my_so = null;

If that doesn't work, the next steps would be to put trace statements in and around the SOs and make sure they aren't being accessed while the program is running.