SuperGeekery

Jul 26

2008

Top 5 Flash Components K Sizes Killers

I don’t work with Flash Components much, but have been doing some experimentation with them recently for a class I’m preparing. Flash Componets can make something that’s a little complex much easier to accomplish. But that ease of use comes at a price. The Flash 9 components are surprisingly heavy in terms of K size. This basically rules out their use in most ad banners. By the way, my top five don’t refer to which components are the heaviest, but the ones I wish were smaller because I find them useful.

1. FLVPlayback - 51K
2. UILoader - 15K
3. UIScrollBar - 18K
4. ProgressBar - 16K
5. Button - 14K

One word of caution if you experiment with components. Once you place one of these Flash Components into your Flash document, they are now in your library. Even if you erase them from the stage, they will still export into your SWF, leaving you with the extra K size there. To make sure they’re not exporting with your SWF, delete them from the library of your document as well.