Flash Optimizer is a handy software solution for Webmasters, Web designers, Flash professionals, and everyone who has ever come in touch with Adobe Flash technology. It reduces your SWF files by 60 to 70 percent, thanks to amazing algorithms of vectors, shapes, morphing, Z-buffering, fonts, and other optimizations. Unlike similar software, Flash Optimizer optimizes not just part of your Flash movie, but the whole SWF, including curves, zero objects, and ZLib optimization.

It provides the simplest and customizable user interface with two types of compression configurations, simple and profound, allowing you to customize more than 50 separate options, reaching the optimum compression with minimum quality loss. Version 1.48 may include unspecified updates, enhancements, or bug fixes.

Editor's review of Flash Optimizer

If you use an authoring tool, such as Macromedia Flash, to produce rich content for the Web, your SWF files are probably larger than they need to be. This design utility provides a full range of compression functions that can dramatically reduce the size of your Flash-based content, giving you precise control over every aspect of your project for optimal results.

Those results are impressive. We shaved nearly 250KB off a 350KB SWF file containing fonts, vector graphics, and raster images with no noticeable degradation in quality. Only after selecting the highest possible compression settings were we able to seriously muck up our SWF file. The configurable user interface provides a selection of layout options that make it easy to work on a wide variety of projects, from small buttons to full-screen interfaces. On the downside, the program does not provide an easy way to preview results or view the file sizes of graphics after they have been optimized.

This program needs small refinements such as a preview function, but the extensive control and impressive results it offers may leave you wondering how you ever got by without it.