Flash file minimisation techniques.

I have a 500kb flash file for my page.
It takes a while to load the whole thing. Is this too big for a first page?

What are ways or techniques to minimise this size or atleast make it looks like its loading quick, besides the obvious image compression or sound compression, are there other ways.

What do people think are the average website flash sites size are these days.


TIA

there are many ways you can optimise your movie without having to go the route of compression.

a well laid-out and proffessional approach to your scripting can help. couple this with knowledge on the notoriously slow methods to avoid.

i found a great page on this. i won't attempt to duplicate the content here as it's pretty well explained.

hope this helps some!

http://flasm.sourceforge.net/#optimization

500k is way too big for first page

when dealing with large flash files is make sure the visitor asks for the big file, knows it's big, and has a way to back out after asking for the big file

if you really have something worth a 500k download offer it after your site is open, otherwise you're going to piss people off. plus, people are far more critical of anything they are forced to watch than they are of something the asked to watch.