Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
the frame rate of your movie. When you start adding other factors
like user interaction, other animations happening at the same time,
and functions running their code when they
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re called, you can
imagine the potential consequences.
The colors you use in your vector art should be just as much of
a consideration as the complexity of the lines. As you might ima-
gine, gradients are more complicated than solids and they contain
a good deal more data for the Flash Player to process. Obviously
gradients can
t be avoided 100% of the time, but you should try to
limit how often you use them and how many you have on the
screen at any given time (especially if they will be animated).
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Text and Fonts
Something else to consider in the optimization of your work is text
and fonts. I
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m including them in this chapter because they can
sometimes bloat your file size by great amounts without you even
realizing that it
s happening. They can also be treated in the wrong
way and end up looking like a big blurry, unreadable mess. When
you
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re working with a specific font that is used by your client,
don
t embed the entire font if the text is going to be static. Instead,
embed only the letters, numbers, and punctuation that will actually
be used. Another option for static areas of text is to use an image.
Itmightsoundalittleantiproductiveinthesenseofoptimization,
but if you only have one or two words in a particular font,
sometimes an image produces a smaller file size than embedding
any of the font at all. If you do end up using such an image, be
aware that changes to the wording will mean more work. Instead
of just opening up your Flash file and typing in the change, you
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ll
have to open up another tool like Photoshop to make the change,
save the new image, and update it in your .fla. With the number
of changes that can very easily be coming your way, it can get
a little tedious.
Another option that you may want to experiment with but
generally avoid is breaking apart the text. In some cases, this may
save you a small bit of file size and it may be just enough to
squeak that banner in under the required size. However, you
should also remember that when you break that text apart, it is
converted into vector shapes and lines. Jumping back just a bit,
you
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ll recall that I suggested avoiding complicated vectors and
there are some fonts out there that can have extremely complicated
outlines. In addition to the complicated vectors, there
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salsothe
issue of editing the text after it
s broken apart. Imagine if you were
working on a project where you were creating 30 banners and all
of them had the same tagline in them. Now imagine you break
apart the text for the taglines in all of them. Next, imagine that you
have finished creating all of the banners and you
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re told that one
