Limit the Number of Fonts and Font Styles in Flash Documents
The more fonts and font styles you have in your document the larger it will be. Flash stores a version of the font in the Flash document, and if you have multiple styles like bold, italics, and small caps, your document can get very large in a hurry.
Avoid Embedded Fonts in Flash
Embedded fonts in Flash rapidly increase the file size. In fact, if your Flash document is too large, the first thing you should look at is how many fonts you have embedded. It can be very tempting to embed many fonts because then your document will look how you want it to look no matter what. But having a page that downloads in 10 minutes versus 10 seconds is not a benefit.
I once was working on a Flash document that had multiple languages in it. We first embedded around 20 fonts so that all the languages would show up correctly. But this made what was essentially a very simple application around 5MB - way too big for a Web page to download. We had to remove most of the embedded fonts to make it download fast enough. In fact, according to the Flash help document, "some fonts, particularly those used for Asian languages, can add significantly to the SWF file size when embedded."
Remove Embedded Fonts
- Select a text box and open the Properties (Window > Properties)
- Click on the Embed button
- Click the "Don't Embed" button
- Click OK to close the window
Embed Only the Font Characters You Need
The best thing to do when embedding fonts to keep the file size down is to only embed the font glyphs that you need. When you open the Embed dialog box, below the font options is a text box you can choose which glyphs you need. The easiest thing to do is click on the "Autofill" button, and Flash will fill in the glyphs you should embed. This allows you to embed fonts, but keep the file size down by only embedding the fonts your file uses.
