Optimizing Flash documents 65
To optimize documents:
■ Use symbols, animated or otherwise, for every element that appears more than once.
■ When creating animation sequences, use tweened animations, whenever possible. These
animations use less file space than a series of keyframes.
■ For animation sequences, use movie clips instead of graphic symbols.
■ Limit the area of change in each keyframe; make the action take place in as small an area
as possible.
■ Avoid animating bitmap elements; use bitmap images as background or static elements.
■ For sound, use MP3, the smallest sound format, whenever possible.
To optimize elements and lines:
■ Group elements as much as possible.
■ Use layers to separate elements that change during the animation from those that do not.
■ Use Modify > Curves > Optimize to minimize the number of separate lines that are used
to describe shapes.
■ Limit the number of special line types, such as dashed, dotted, ragged, and so on. Solid
lines require less memory. Lines created with the Pencil tool require less memory than
brush strokes.
To optimize text and fonts:
■ Limit the number of fonts and font styles. Use embedded fonts sparingly because they
increase file size.
■ For Embed Fonts options, select only the characters needed instead of including the
entire font.
To optimize colors:
■ Use the Color menu in the Symbol Property inspector to create many instances of a single
symbol in different colors.
■ Use the Color Mixer (Window > Color Mixer) to match the color palette of the document
to a browser-specific palette.
■ Use gradients sparingly. Filling an area with gradient color requires about 50 bytes more
than filling it with solid color.
■ Use alpha transparency sparingly because it can slow playback.
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