Performance and Optimization Adobe Flash Tutorials
Optimization involves two unrelated issues: reducing a movie's file size to speed download times and improving playback to ensure that the movie plays equally well on different computers, regardless of processor speed. Learn: Vector graphics optimization, optimize your drawings, sound and video optimization, Cache bitmaps to improve performance, how to reduce the file size of a movie without affecting quality, how to remove unnecessary special effects to improve performance and more.
Stop Browser Catching Data
Are you sick of your browser caching loaded variables? are you sick of loaded movies being cached? Then heres how to stop the browser from caching your data. The browsers cache comes in handy for slow connections, all the requests you make to a webserver are stored in a local folder on your computer, so that the next time you make the same request, the file can be loaded from the local hardrive as opposed to having to download the data over the internet again.
Checking if a File Exists
Sometimes it is necessary to determine if a file exists using actionscript, for example when you have a preloader cue, that loads a series of .jpgs one after another, if one of the files doesnt exist then the cue wouldnt traverse any further, you could of course use a timeout in that scenario but why not just check if the file exists before loading it, so that if necessary you can move onto the next item in the cue almost instantly.
Optimising a Flash Movie
Want to create fast loading Flash movies. Essential skills for all Flash developers.In this tutorial I will look at those things which clog up a Flash file. Then I will look at what you can do to help create meaner and leaner files.
Pictures for the web
How to scan or find pictures to use in Flash or your web page. Including the different file formats and how to compress pictures.
Lower your file size
When you use lots of images/sounds/video in flash your final file size can be huge!! What you can do is lower the quality of your images/sounds which can make a big difference on file size...Don't worry you will hardly see the difference too, you wont loose much quality :)
How To Work With The Size Report Flash tutorial
In this video clip tutorial you will learn the following:
How to work with the Generate Size Report in Flash.
How to interpret the information generated in the Size Report in Flash.
How to double-check for certain elements that may create large files.
Preload External Flash Movies using Movie Clips
This tutorial shows you an easy way to load one Flash Movie into another. This loads the external Flash SWF Movie into a Movie Clip with the help of the Progress Bar Component. Loading a Movie into an MC means that you can address the Movie Clip in the ActionScript and change the Movie Clips properties. This MC includes the external swf file so any change that you impose on the Movie Clip also changes the external Movie nested within.
Loading External Images Flash tutorial
The aim of the tutorial is to learn how to create a Flash Movie which loads an Array (list) of external images such as Jpegs or Gifs. These images would then be loaded individually into the Flash Movie as and when the user wished to look at them. This makes the Flash Movie much smaller and reduces the pre-load time for the Flash Movie. The individual images would each have there own pre-loader, so that there is a small delay before loading individual images but no long wait at the beginning of the Movie.
Load Movies into Levels and Movie clips Flash tutorial
The aim of the tutorial is to learn how to use Levels to load several Flash movies (or Jpegs) simultaneously into a single shockwave file (swf). How to switch between one Flash movie and another without loading a new web page. How to load a new movie into a movie clip of a pre-existing movie. To do this we need to look at the following ActionScript keywords.
Recommendations for the Optimization
In this tutorial you will learn Recommendations for the Optimization Flash tutorial.
Optimizing a Flash Movie
In this tutorial I will look at those things which clog up a Flash file. Then I will look at what you can do to help create meaner and leaner files.
Optimization of FLA files Overview
A brief introduction into optimising your fla files for streaming and use on the web.
FLA Optimization - Design Considerations
Discover what considerations you should look at when design in Flash for optimal performance.
FLA Optimization - The Final Analysis Flash tutorial
How to automatically generate a file size report that gives you an appreciation of you animation in terms of sizes of objects and bandwidth.
Caching SWF files for Faster Movies Flash tutorial
Learn how to cache SWF files to speed up the loading and unloading of movie files that are used repeatedly throughout a site.