I’ve noticed some massive bloat recently in my Flash files & have found my newest culprit. Font embedding. Curses! Thankfully it’s really easy to correct. Here are some tips.

1. Flash auto embeds every font symbol used in static text fields. So if a button using Tahoma Bold says “Click Here” it will embed ClickHer. But keep in mind if you use Tahoma Italic on another “Click Here” button it will re-import those font symbols again.

2. When embedding fonts in a movie, make sure you ONLY embed what you need. If you know a field will only have lowercase fonts, embed only those.

3. _sans, _serif, & _typewriter are built into the Flash Player itself. So there is MINIMAL filesize (around 100 bytes) increase when using these fonts. HOWEVER, they cannot be rasterized, or animated well & will dissappear under masks.

4. When embedding a font, take a look at your fonts folder on your hard-drive & sort by filesize. Which ones have the lowest filesize? Which ones look the best? The filesize of a font is a DIRECT reflection on the file bloat added to your Flash movie.

PS:  A great looking, free, low filesize font is AM Sans. It can be found here. It’s also a great Futura substitute. Also LucidiaMAC is a great for embedding. I’ve embedded the entire alphabit (upper & lower), numbers & select symbols for a file size increase of ~7kb.

Happy Flashing!