anti-Flash bias?
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- JamesEngage0
The thing i find that takes up the most space usually is embedding fonts... that oftens takes up 50 percent of the space.
- unfittoprint0
Optimize, optimize, optimize. And optimize again.
Use modular actionscript, shared libraries, 'saved for web' images, 'externalize' your content [XML, images, db, etc...], make it load on user demand only. Do your components: you'll learn more, and usually make smaller files in size than the components available out there. C'mon, MX's standard scrollbar is 21 kb in size, you can do one yourself only with 2kb...
If a file is 40kb in size can you make it 20kb? Give it a try.
- JamesEngage0
No I can't... believe me :)
- unfittoprint0
you're better than that.
- JamesEngage0
i got it down from 2mb's in the first place... could always check the 'compress movie' button :)
- unfittoprint0
I have this suspicion that the time a user waits for the movie to 'decompress' could be the same time the user would wait for the same 'uncompressed' movie to load...
- mirola0
yeah, fonts are a good one for optimising. your usual truetype font is 19k but if you're doing a standard latin text site you only need a quarter of the fonts that are embedded. if you just embed uppercase, lowercase, numbers and punctuation you can get the font down to 6k.
- JamesEngage0
I find that inlcuding punctuation doesn't always work, and i have to add the characters i want sometimes... such as &+ etc.... v. annoying
- mirola0
the compress movie thing is brilliant, there's no decompression time at all. the only thing you need to worry about is that when you do your preloader, you can't do it in say '28Kb of 130Kb loaded...' because it's not strictly true. you need to do percentages.
- JamesEngage0
I don't think you should use 'kb' values in your prelaoder anyway... it's techy and not all people understand it... if you can use percentages, or even time estimations.
- mirola0
i'm a real loser when it comes to optimising things in flash i'll do things like if an image is symetrical i'll chop it in half and then reflect it so you cant tell the difference. then i go and have a wank over the fact that i just saved myself 3K.
- mirola0
you are absolutely correct JE, unless of course, it's a techy site ;-)
- JamesEngage0
I'm more concerend with processor speed... a flip can't help can it?
- mirola0
yeah, cos 1 repeated graphic thats 30k is gonna move around the screen easier than a 60k graphic. try it.
- JamesEngage0
ah i was thinking you were moving something that was flipped in flash...
- dstlb0
If it's done badly they notice it's Flash and will (rightly) knock you for it, if it's done well they don't realise and think of it as just another website.
Trouble is there's too many people (including myself occasionally) doing 'bad' Flash and that's why it gets a bad name.
- honda0
this single html wrapper for newstoday is close to 14kb current pbs is 15kb. on the small side, this site per page is about 10-20kb. you could build the same with a flash site with a slightly larger file size and exact same set up. requires much more code and time but fundamentally, it would be the same. the advantage? site only loads ONCE ... will only ever load ONCE.
Fox, CNN, MTV, BBC all have shitty load times for site predominantly created in html/server side code. you take a hit either way you look at it.
The biggest thing messing up flash was the inability to sync with normal web user functions without havin g to do hella scripting (ie., scrollMouse detection, page caching to use back button, tool tips, etc.) flash mx and namely mx04 have changed the game.
all flash. page caching, back button support, scrollMouse detection...
it can be done. it takes a good developer. flash is more than just visual. there is a backend and those that know how to harness it have made flash what it is today...an integral part of all browsers and becoming a standard for web interaction.
more in a sec. got to get back to work...
- jpea0
my beef towards people that only like html and have a specific bias away from flash is that, if you make it right, a site can be smaller in flash than in html.
my reasoning, flash has awesome compression. Caveat: if you use it correctly.
Optimizing every image specifically, starting from a good source (png) for images, optimizing fonts to include only what you need, etc...
just do your homework and you'll be fine. Most of my flash sites were a lot smaller than their previous html counterparts. (except for 2 sites, but i could care less about those..their purpose was entertainment so that's my excuse).
- paulrand0
by the year 2000 everyone will have broadband anyway
- brandelec0
by the year 2000 - i'll have my hoverboard