Scaling a swf in Dreamweaver

leanne

New Member
Hello,

I'm hoping to get some advice for my nearly finished website. The area I am struggling with is getting the page to resize so that it fits the browser window without losing so much image quality. I have designed my website in Flash CS4 to dimensions 800x600 but when I preview it it is quite small.

I have exported the file from Flash as a swf and am using Dreamweaver to upload my site. I have set the width and height to 100% which fills the window but looses a lot of the image quality. The images used are 72dpi.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Leanne
 
Evening Leanne,

Do you have a link to site to have a look at or able to send over a copy of exported files?

If you need my email PM me.

Craig
 
Ok just taken a quick look & would say increase res for a start

Best way to test resizing ones is to just view SWF in browser (Firefox works)

http://www.pialeannemallinder.co.uk/pialeannemallinder.swf

For me the image quality is extremely bad so as a first step up this.

The SWF is just over 4mb, make sure all images are optimzed before putting them into the Flash file. I had one flash file at around 8mb, optimized pictures and file size went down to 800kb, a tenth of the size! For the amount of images you have this seems a large file size so I would check the orignal photos first.

Also if it does increase file size then get a preloader onto the file so people know that it is loading behind! Are you on skype or MSN as might be easier to give advice

Craig
 
Your site is very nice but I just wanted to point out one thing...

There is nothing in there that cannot be achived with some simple XHTML and CSS. Why did you go for the flash option? Since the downside of flash is that it is no use for SEO, you will struggle to get indexed.

I know that google announched in 2008 that they are working with Adobe and now have better ways to index the text in flash, but flash is still a struggle for SEO and not the best option for a "full" website. You would be far better doign the site in XHTML/CSS and ahve some elements of flash embedded to "spice it up".

This might not be a problem for you but I just wanted to mention it in case you overlooked the SEO part.
 
Thank you for your advice I'll definitely have another look at the images. None of them are large files as I used the save for web option in Photoshop which reduced them.

I'm afraid I don't have skype or MSN and I can only work on this at uni as my version of flash is ancient (macromedia flash 8). I'll work on it tomorrow and post again if I get stuck.

Thank you for your advice, Leanne
 
Hello Darren,

My web design skills are basic at best and I felt using programs like Flash and Dreamweaver would make it easier for me. I had originally designed my site in Dreamweaver but my uni tutor advised me to use Flash, as he felt it would be easier for me rather than having to use CSS's.

At the moment I don't mind that I won't appear on google, I'm just trying to concentrate on getting this finished so I can send out some self promotional items with my URL on. What code would you recommend I use for the CSS? I have read some other feeds where people have said it was possible to fix using them.

Thanks Leanne
 
hello again,
I've been working on this again this morning and the pictures I used are optimised. I've tried to improve the resolution and have gone up to 300dpi but the images are still losing quality. I really need them to look crisp.
Any suggestions?

Leanne
 
it must be the way you are making the swf file.. are you just exporting as low res or high res swf (when publishing?)
 
When I export the swf from flash it does not give me the option of high or low res just the format. I had a look at the publish settings and increased the Flash jpeg quality to 100 and the HTML quality to best but that doesn't seem to have made a difference.
 
hmmm... i'll have to look at the export stuff on my Flash version when i get home :)
 
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