Ways to Optimize Your Flash Movie | Certified Macromedia Flash MX Designer Study Guide

An architect would never build a house without blueprints, so why would you design a Flash document without some sort of outline or plan of attack? Flash provides several ways to optimize your documents.

First and foremost, if a SWF needs to load large assets, use a preloader. A preloader, simply put, is an entertaining distraction that keeps your end user's attention while the rest of the Flash file loads. The preloader is the first thing the end user sees. For a preloader to work efficiently , its file size must be kept to a minimum. If it takes forever for the preloader to load, you've defeated its purpose. A preloader can be informative or entertaining; it could even be an interactive game. In the meantime, the rest of your Flash content is loading. By the time the preloader has finished playing, your Flash content has been loaded, and your end users can enjoy your entire site without any interruptions or mishaps.

Another way to optimize your Flash movie is to use the loadMovie action. This lets you create a number of smaller documents as opposed to one large Flash document. By loading many small movies, you empower your end user to view only the content that they want or need to see. This allows for faster downloads, since they will be downloading only the information that they need to see, as opposed to downloading an entire document.

Another technique is to use those symbols. Remember, Flash reads symbols only once, so one instance of a tree graphic symbol placed on the stage yields the same exported file size as 100 instances of that same tree symbol on the stage. Also, convert everything you use within the stage into a symbol. Symbols take up less space than nonsymbols. Also, make use of shared symbols.

NOTE

Shared symbols let you share a symbol across multiple Flash documents. This not only helps with file size optimization, it also makes life a lot easier when you have to replace the symbol. Simply go into symbol-editing mode of that symbol and make your changes. Whatever changes you implement within that symbol will be reflected throughout all the documents in which it is being used.

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