Posted by Anthony in Flash, Web Design tagged actionscript 3, arrays, Flash, optimization, XML

Let’s face it.  When it comes to Flash websites, people either love them or hate them.  For those who hate them, I firmly believe it’s because of two main reasons: crappy SEO (search engine optimization), and long load times (a direct result of heavy file weights).  While the issue of SEO is its own beast, I won’t get into that now.  For now, I’m going to focus on 10 easy ways to optimize your Flash website to make it meaner, leaner, and more user-friendly.  Believe me, if you start using some of these ideas, your sites will transform in ways you never though imaginable.  And you’ll notice that you’ll get a much smoother and quicker site.  With that said, let’s get started.

1. Use XML files to set content framework

On nearly every Flash site I work on, I use at least some XML. The great thing about XML files is they are a great way to structure blocks of your site.  For instance, if you want a slideshow on your site, you could have an XML file that contains the title, url, and other image-specific information you want to include for each image. Then, just import the XML into Flash and store the XML data in arrays to organize the information to use later.  (More on arrays below.)

Another great thing about using XML in Flash is that if you want to stream an RSS feed into a Flash site, you can, because RSS feeds are set up as XML.  (For more info on RSS feeds, see the post on Streaming RSS feeds into Your Flash Applications.)

Additionally, XML is easy to change without having to republish your site.  Say you have that slideshow I mentioned above, but want to swap out an image.  With XML, you just point to the new url, update the title, and save. Your Flash site will automatically update with the new info, and you won’t have to republish every time. Trust me, you’ll thank yourself for using XML when you build your Flash site.

2. Use arrays to organize assets used in your code

For me, using arrays is quite possibly one of the smartest and most powerful things you can do to optimize your code.  Not necessarily from a file weight perspective, but because with arrays, you can reference an object stored in an array by name, number, id, etc. For instance, say you have 20 thumbnail images you want to make clickable to open a larger image. You could attach individual event listeners to each image.  Or, you could set up a couple of arrays — one for the instance names of each image, and one for the reference to the larger image to load when clicked — and run “for” loops to set the event listeners all at once. While you’re in the “for” loop, set an ID number for each image that you can then reference in your “click” function that will fire on mouse click, and call up that ID number slot in the large image array.  With only a few lines of code, you’ll have a powerful way to batch chunks of your code with minimal effort. (For more info on arrays, see my post on Utilizing the Power of Arrays in Adobe Flash.)

3. Only import and embed absolutely necessary image files into your file.

If you’ve been on the Web at all…and judging by you reading this, I’m guessing you have…you know doubt know that a lot of people don’t like Flash sites.  The main reason seems to be they take way too long to load.  To get around this, I highly suggest importing and embedding ONLY the images you absolutely need.  If you have a lot of image assets, I suggest loading them dynamically via code, and placing them in the appropriate places.  This not only makes the file size considerably smaller, but it also opens the door to be able to update an image, replace it, and have Flash automatically read in the updated file without the need to republish the entire site.  (Sorta sounds like one of the key perks of using XML, doesn’t it?)  And trust me, users will thank you for having a site that loads (or at least shows up with a short preloader) in 5 seconds, rather than a beefy site that doesn’t show up until the entire thing loads.

4. Load assets in an orderly fashion, not all at once

Along with #3 above, when you load assets into your Flash site dynamically, it’s best to set up a structure and order in which to load them. For instance, load all of the home/landing page assets first. Once those are loaded, proceed with the next set of assets that you think will be needed/viewed by your users.  Not using a certain set of images until later in the site?  Don’t load them up front. Wait until the rest of the assets before it have been loaded first. Think about it.  Would you rather try to have 20 images load all at once?  Or load them in the order of which they’ll be seen? Loading them one at a time will speed up the individual image load time because there is only one image needing attention while it is being loaded, not all 20?

5. Cool it with the videos

Okay, this sounds harsh, but hear me out. Video is great. It’s everywhere, and it’s getting more popular by the day.  (YouTube, anyone?)  But when you’re making a Flash site, video can also be a beast to work with, specifically video that needs to stream without a playback bar.  The worst thing about video is file size. I’ll admit, video has come a long way in optimizing file weights and all, but at the end of the day, even a small video is still going to be around 1-2MB.  When you are using video, make sure you utilize the “loading assets in an orderly fashion” advice from above.  If you try to start streaming a video when 20 images are loading while it’s trying to play, you’ll no doubt get choppy playback.

6. Use TweenMax or TweenLite for code-based tweening and animating

I’m a big fan of keeping my Flash sites on one frame of the timeline, and doing as much as I possibly can with code, rather than with the timeline.  The reason for this is simply less time making changes later on down the road.  Want to make every tween of an image fading out half as long across the entire site?  Pretty laborious if you’re using the timeline.  But if you’re using code, it’s a matter of updating a couple of numbers.

This is where TweenMax and TweenLite come in.  In a nutshell, they’re the best tweening engine out there.  Using it, you can call one function that can alter many facets of an object at once (x and y position, alpha, tint, etc.).  You can also attach event listeners like onComplete, onStart, etc., that call functions to run at specific times during the tween.  In short, these tweening engines will make you wonder why you ever used timeline-based animations.  And best of all, they’re extremely light in file weight, unlike a lot of timeline-based animations.  And it’s a one-time file weight addition, not a per-tween sort of thing.

7. Simulate downloading on slower connections

Not everyone has a cable-speed connection. Believe it or not, there are still a lot of people out there using DSL or slower connections.  And as unfortunate as it may be, those are the people you need to build the site for.  Don’t ever assume that your audience is going to have the latest and greatest computers.

To simulate downloads in Flash, export your movie and select “View > Simulate Download”.  To set different connection speed settings, select “View > Download Settings”, and select your desired speed (or create your own custom speed).  Flash can be deceiving. When you test out a movie, it always runs lightning fast. But by testing it using the “Simulate Download” method, you’ll get a much better idea of how your site will behave on the Web.

8. Build buttons and other UI components as vector artwork in Flash

One of my biggest pet peeves is using raster images for buttons that could easily be made as vector art in Flash.  Not only does this make having to update the button a multi-step process, but it also beefs up the size of the file.  It may not be much, but if you get a dozen different image buttons, you could easily have just added 100+ kb to your file weight.  Might not seem by much, but as people’s attention spans are getting shorter and shorter, that added 2 seconds of load time you just added might be costly, and you may see an increase in the number of dropped users.

My motto is this: “If it can be made in Flash, make it in Flash”.  Vector art is not only easily editable, but also a huge file weight saver.  Plus, you don’t get any degradation of quality that you’d get if you used images.  All of your lines, colors, gradients, etc. are crystal clear.  Pair that with the almost non-existent file weight they carry, and what’s not to love?

9. Write custom Classes for reusable code

If you write Actionscript code, you use Classes.  You might not know it, but you do.  Every time you use a property of a MovieClip instance (i.e. myClip_mc.y to get the “y” position), you’re calling the MovieClip class.  Same with Sprites, Buttons, UI Components, etc.  Classes are a staple in object-oriented programming, and allow you to read or set properties, call functions (methods), and respond to events.  It’s a great way to reuse the same code over and over again, by simply importing the classes into your site file.

One of my personal favorite classes that I have written is for an Email Validator, which contains the logic to check whether a string is a valid email address or not.  You can check it out in my previous post on Building a Better Email Validator in Flash.  Each time I need to use this, I simply import it into my file (which is 1 line of code), make an instance of the validator (1 line of code), then call the validate function and pass in the string to validate (1 line of code).  In all, for me to validate an email address, it takes 3 lines of code.  Much better than rewriting all of the validation logic in a dozen different files, eh?

10. Use FlashVars to set important global variables

Every so often, you’ll run into an issue where you’ll want to change a variable from outside of your Flash file. An easy way to do this is to use the FlashVars parameter when embedding your Flash file in HTML.  I find that I mostly use FlashVars for variables that will change from a “staging” site to the final “production” site.  The most often used variable that I personally encounter is the account name for Omniture tracking. The bulk of sites I develop have different staging and production Omniture account names, so the metrics don’t get skewed while testing.  But if I embed that account name into the Flash file, I suddenly need 2 different versions of the Flash file — one for staging, one for production.  But if I have a FlashVar set up for this account name, I can just change the variable in the HTML code, and have Flash read it in.  Trust me, it’s a handy way to avoid having multiple versions of the same file for different environments.

In Conclusion…

So there you have it.  10 easy ways to optimize your Flash sites.  There are many more ways to optimize Flash sites, and I’m sure I’ll get into them in later posts.  But these are some of the main culprits.  And trust me, individual posts could be written about each one of these (and some already have).  If you want to see posts that dive deeper into any of these, just let me know and I’ll write it up.  Until next time, happy coding!