Ballooning File Solution

[Andrea Kelso <andreak -at- ASTOUND -dot- COM>]

Thanks to all who responded to my question about the size of my help file.

I received some excellent responses that I looked into, but the prize goes to Chuck Martin who suggested I take a second look at the colour resolution of the bitmaps I was using.

Most of the bitmaps linked to the help file are tiny screen shots of buttons in the GUI.  I had redone many of them and about 25 screen shots of buttons that I did on one particular day were saved as true colour rather than 256 colour. I changed the graphics to 256 colour and recompiled the help file.  My 8 MB file magically shrunk to 477 KB.

My lesson:  Never, Never, Never, No matter how small, use True Colour Images in a help file.

Again, thanks to everyone who responded.  If anyone out there can tell me why 25 tiny graphics, about 1 KB in size and most only used 2 or 3 times in the Help file, made an 8 MB difference, I would love to know.

AK

Andrea Kelso
Technical Writer, Astound incorporated
andreak -at- astound -dot- com

My opinions don't necessarily agree with those of the company, they don't even necessarily agree with my other opinions.
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