Flash File Sizes

[ivanthem]

Hi all,

I don't know if this was posted already, but why on earth do people not compress their SWFs with software like 'SWF Compressor' or the compress option in Flash??? For one, it stops import into Swish and lowers file size by up to 70% or sumthin. So why don't as many sites use it as much as they should? Is there loss of quality or load time or what???? Please help

[gerbick]

I've found that Swish balloons the size files. In fact, taking my files to anything but Macromedia Flash seems to add size to the files.

as far as the rest, if you plan ahead, which most people do not, then you will invariably need to use something like Optimaze.

But even that will only grab and compress the vector art. the rest, you have to just... well. think ahead for raster images.

[ivanthem]

You're right- pix can't be compressed. But when you look at it, there is a quite a bit of vector in most sites- the 50% opacity for rollover rectangle shape is just one (using a lame example). Even if it's 50KB knocked off a 3 meg file, that's still around 10 seconds saved for the 56k'ers...

[roger_onslow]

SWiSHmax can read compressed SWF files just fine. And SWISHmax produces often smaller SWF files than Flash does due to its automatic instancing, and its automatic vetor compression etc.

NOTE: If you import a SWF into either FLash or SWISH and then export, you'll often end up with something bigger due to some of the side-effects of import and reexport.