Now that you have had an overview, we'll look at the considerations you should employ in you designs. Aside from the 28.8K drawback, there are others.
The F-word, Fonts
Like any development program the more fonts you use the larger your file size. However if you require lots of fonts, so be it! It won't kill you but from a typographical point of view, it looks better when you have a simple style employed throughout your movie.
Load Before You Overload
If you create an action packed frame 100 you need to ensure it's completely loaded before your playhead reaches it. If you don't, prepare yourself for a bumpy viewing experience that will border on crap and place you, the developer, between a rock and a hard place. However having said that you will probably find this will increase the intial loading time, especially if you preload your whole movie. In that case our tutorial on preloaders may help you out. Another option is to preload individual images earlier and have them 'wait' on the sidelines for their big moment.
Tip: As a rule, the smaller the better but without compromising the quality of your movie too much.
Test, Test, Test and Test Again
The important learning point here is, if you haven't already guess it, is to test your movie. Try different versions of IE and Netscape as well as any others you have have. Because to achieve mass appeal you have to appeal to the mass and the mass like to have different browers. It sucks I know, but thats why we're called developers and not factory workers.
Kill the excess art
When you create artwork ensure that you kill any unnecessary lines and parts of the picture that you don't require. Limit the number of special line types such as dashed, dotted, ragged, and so on. Solid lines are smaller and lines created with the pencil tool require less memory than brush strokes. As for imported files, make sure there are no hidden lines or objects. Flash also provides you with Smooth, Straighten and Optimise Curves options which refines curved lines and fill outlines by reducing the number of curves used to define the artwork. Optimizing curves also reduces the size of the Flash movie and the size of exported Flash Player movie.
Use the slider to specify the degree of smoothing. Check the Use Multiple Passes option to repeat the smoothing process until no further optimization can be accomplished. The Show Totals Message option displays an alert box that indicates the extent of the optimization when smoothing is complete.
Re-use, Recycle
You do it with your trash (at least I hope you do!) so why not keep in the habit and do it with your Flash movies? Re-using your flash symbols cuts down on the file size. Why create three circles when one circle symbol and three instances (copies) of that symbol will do? If you need different colours, the Color Effects pop-up menu in the Instance Properties dialog box will allow you to modify the properties of each instance. Every new object increases the size of your file.
Too much of a good thing...
Animation is great, however, too much animation at once can leave your CPU up the bandwidth river without a paddle. Whenever possible, use tweened animations, which require less overhead than a series of keyframes. Also when developing flash movies for the web try to avoid:
- Tweening numerous objects
- Alpha (transparency), usually you can get away with tinting you object.
- Scaling small objects at very large percentages
- Too many gradient fills
- Tweening too many colour effects
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