Flash

In order to maintain its small footprint and ensure maximum compatibility, the Flash Player does not support hardware acceleration. Therefore, performance issues are often paramount for the Flash designer. Three areas of possible optimizat...

The only way to ensure the lowest possible wait times is to test your site often during production. Prior to the Flash MX 2004 Version 7.0.1 update, the built-in Bandwidth Profiler offered little help in modeling realistic web conditions...

Vectors graphics are more compact than other image formats because vectors define the math (points, curves, and fills) required to draw the image at runtime rather than the raw graphic data. However, converting the vector data to the final imag...

Although ActionScript can be slow, in most multimedia presentations, the assets such as graphics, audio, and video—and not the code—are often the limiting performance factor. Furthermore, the overall performance (or apparent performance from ...

When deploying Flash content online, filesize is the name of the game. The smaller the file you deploy, the faster it downloads. When compiling a FLA into a SWF, Flash omits unused assets in the Library [Hack #73] . However, the source FLA...

, real-world conditions). When creating a site, you want to know how long it will take to download at a particular connection speed. This helps you ensure the best experience for your target audience, most of whom will have slower connec...

Understanding the issues at hand can help you to both make the appropriate choice and work around some of the limitations of the built-in rendering options. The Flash rendering engine optionally uses antialiasing to smooth out vector edges...

The Flash graphic-rendering engine is designed to minimize the filesize of your content by optimizing the drawing of vector graphics instead of bitmaps. Therefore, performance can be a problem when you want to move complex graphics around qui...

The Flash Bandwidth Profiler and the third-party WebSpeed Simulator [Hack #66] calculate estimated download times, but they don't address runtime performance. Whereas the former varies with connection speed, the latter depends on the processing...

Optimization of that sort is essentially a lowest common denominator affair. This hack addresses the need to maximize animation and other effects for faster machines without creating a movie that bogs down on slower machines. Although Fl...

We saw earlier how to estimate download times [Hack #66], allowing you to cram the maximum presentation into the smallest filesize. Performance has a lower priority in the Flash Player design than does filesize optimization, which means that...

Vector images are drawn using mathematical formulas that define the shapes and fills. This means that vectors provide crisp and scalable graphics in a compact download size. However, rendering an antialiased vector shape can take more process...

Many Flash presentations, especially business applications or movies meant to simulate desktop applications, require standard UI elements such as buttons and drop-down lists. These standard elements are provided by Macromedia in the form of p...