Optimizing the swf

23 Nov, 2007

In the last couple days I’ve been trying to reduce the weight of my swf files (files made in Flash). And then I found Web Experto where they publish a couple tips, which I’m sharing with you all.

Most of the time when we try to generate a design in Flash we tend to repeat elements for the scenery (Buttons, MovieClips, Grafics, etc). Why do you draw the same thing over and over again when you can use your symbols with different properties? Using symbols can reduce the weight for the final product.
The Flash entourage was created for a drawer/animator desktop. Nonetheless, if we need to make any type of motion animation, it’s not good to use it photogram by protogram, it’s better to use Motion interpolations because Flash makes many complex calculations to create the animation and optimization of the weight in the final product.
With bitmaps we can create textures that we cannot do with vectors. But if we do, then the KB will go up in our files. They are a must in many occasions, if you’re going to use them, just try to compress them as much as possible without losing all the quality of course. For this we have, PIXresizer; which is a program to compress this type of files.
When using any component will increase 30 KB of your file. To avoid this from happening we have to create supplemental elements
One of the great advantages of Flash is the possibility of showing static texts with any font. If our fonts are too complex, we’ll also increase the weight of our file. It’s better to use pixeled and light fonts like Arial, Verdana, etc.
When you add music to your file, try with different bitrates until you find an understandable sound, not distorted and appropriate to it’s weight
Optimizing the code, not repeating it. Using generic functions that can be recycled. You have to get use to use the same code and not make a mess out of it. Using less comments within the article doesn’t affect the final product because they’ll not be incorporated into the swf file.