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Now that you have had an overview, we'll look at the considerations you should employ in you designs. Aside from the 28.8K drawback, there are others.
The F-word, Fonts
Like any development program the more fonts you use the larger your file size. However if you require lots of fonts, so be it! It won't kill you but from a typographical point of view, it looks better when you have a simple style employed throughout your movie.
Load Before You Overload
If you create an action packed frame 100 you need to ensure it's completely loaded before your playhead reaches it. If you don't, prepare yourself for a bumpy viewing experience that will border on crap and place you, the developer, between a rock and a hard place. However having said that you will probably find this will increase the intial loading time, especially if you preload your whole movie. In that case our tutorial on preloaders may help you out.
Another option is to preload individual images earlier and have them 'wait' on the sidelines for their big moment.
Tip: As a rule, the smaller the better but without compromising the quality of your movie too much.
Test, Test, Test and Test Again
The important learning point here is, if you haven't already guess it, is to test your movie. Try different versions of IE and Netscape as well as any others you have have. Because to achieve mass appeal you have to appeal to the mass and the mass like to have different browers. It sucks I know, but thats why we're called developers and not factory workers.
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FLA Optimisation - Design Considerations
