Here is our finished animation. To play it again, after it has already played, right click on the image and select Play. While you're at it, right click and select Zoom In. Can you guess what the file size is? Would you believe 4KB?

Hard to believe but true.

Next month, if there is sufficient interest, I will attempt to recreate the XaraXone home page animation in Flash.

In the meantime, here are some things to consider when creating Flash animations. Use Xara's drawing tools to create your symbols and export them as Flash swf files, either in a bunch, as we did here today, or as individual swf files.

Avoid using fancy effects that are not supported by Flash, (which is just about everything), including  gradient transparency, more than two color fills, drop shadows, bevels, and so forth. You can use these effects but because Flash does not support them directly, they will either be converted to bitmaps, which will greatly increase your file size, or in many cases, the special effects and/for fills will be stripped away.

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