FLA04 Publishing Considerations

Hands-On: Flash MX 2004 Publishing

File Size Considerations for Publishing

The fastest way to lose your audience is to have a page that takes forever to load. If you only decide to target an audience with high-speed connections, it still is a small segment of the Internet population, most now only sport a 56KBs modem or slower.

Calculating Download Times

In reality, you can only estimate how long a file might take to download, since there so many variables influencing the speed. And, that includes Internet traffic at different times during the day.
Basically, it's as simple as: file size / rate of download = time to load the page. To sum it up, the bigger the file, the longer the download time will be.
Flash can help with creating smaller pages, but some of the tools can do just the opposite.
Tools like Modify, Shape, and Soften Fill Edges, for example will increase file size, so only use them when absolutely needed.

Embedded Fonts can be Large

When you select a block of text and choose Modify > Break Apart, the text turns into a shape.
You won't be able to edit the text after it's broken apart; your file size usually increases because Flash MX 2004 stores all the curves in every character of the text. (The reason you might break apart the text is to create a Shape Tween).
There are times when you don't have a choice between using broken-apart text and Static Text.
If you're using Dynamic or Input Text, there isn't an option to break it apart.
You shouldn't embed more font outlines than absolutely necessary because this adds significantly to the file size.

Nested Movie Clips are Smaller than Nested Graphics

Graphic symbols are great if you need to preview their changes in the Timeline.
Movie Clips (which are nested inside other Movie Clips) will result in a smaller file size.
A disadvantage of Movie Clips, though, is that all nested frames will download before the movie proceeds whereas a Graphic can stream one nested frame at a time.

Shape Teens vs. Motion Teens

Basically, you want the fewest keyframes possible.
A Motion Tween, however, requires Flash to create in-between keyframes.
In reality, if you use a Motion Tween to move a circle across the screen with a keyframe on frame 1 and another on frame 10, the effect would be the same as 10 individual keyframes.
Basically, frame-by-frame animation and Motion Tweens are about the same; however, using frame-by-frame animation, you may find that you can pull off the same effect with fewer frames!
To sum this up, avoid Shape Tweens and (in all cases) look for ways to use fewer frames.
If you want a Shape Tween to get your point across, and then by all means feel free; Flash has other file size saving tricks up its sleeve.

Sounds and Bitmaps

All the items mentioned so far are a hill of beans compared to Sounds and Bitmaps. Anything you can do to reduce their size will result in a major savings in the file size of your movie.
Flash has several ways to compressaudio and bitmaps, some of which can be set via the Publish Settings.
For audio, you should always use MP3 or Voice.
Remember, stereo sounds are twice as big as mono sounds.
Consider savingasmono unless it's absolutely critical that it remain stereo.
Consider trimming off excessive silence from the beginning and ending of every sound.
Sound takes up the same file space for every second they're played, regardless of whether they're audible or not.
You can reduce the file size of bitmaps in several ways; the most important way... doesn’t use them at all!
Avoid as many raster graphics as possible, whether they are .jpg, .gif, or .bmp, and try to use vector graphics whenever you can.
There is the possibility of using Modify > Trace Bitmap, but only use when the graphic contains bold geometric shapes.
Use the best sources available to you, and then let Flash compress the file for the Web.
If you import already compressed graphic files into Flash MX 2004, it will only try to compress it further upon publishing, resulting in apoorer quality than you expected for the page.