My Flash Site looks very low in quality (I'm viewing in High Quality)

Question

Hi all,
I am wondering why this Flash site I've designed is so rough
looking (indecipherable text, pixellated edges etc.).
Because I was working with content already created in
Illustrator (10), I copied them over to Flash (CS3) as vectors and
resized them. I'm guessing this method may be a big factor but even
text I added myself doesn't look as good as it should (namely the
buttons and text in the 'Lotus' section); I added my own text using
Flash.
Here are two examples of the site (only the Lotus and
Portfolio buttons work, clicking the Change and Grow icon takes you
back to the home page):
800x550
Resolution
Scales according
to window size
Also, if you go
here you will see a
simple jpeg.
I'd prefer to keep the site at 800x550 resolution without
rescaling but as you can see that isn't a good idea.
[L=This
site]http://ti.arc.nasa.gov/destination/iss/flash/index.html{/L]
uses very small text (in the case of the menu on a black
background) yet looks fine.
Also, the thumbnail on the Portfolio page looks very bad even
though it wasn't resized in any way using Flash (I reduced the size
of the original image in Photoshop and changed the DPI from 200 to
72, then imported it into Flash as a jpeg.
Any help at all is very much appreciated!
Niall
PS. I changed the text to bold to make it a little clearer
though I'd prefer to keep it regular.

Answer 1

"I copied them over to Flash (CS3) as vectors and resized
them" - what do you mean you copied over to Flash? Do you mean
import?
"text I added myself doesn't look as good as it should" -
check your anti-aliasing in Flash
"I'd prefer to keep the site at 800x550 resolution without
rescaling but as you can see that isn't a good idea." - no,
actually that is a good idea - not to rescale - any time you resize
a flash document with rastered graphics, you will get distortion
'uses very small text (in the case of the menu on a black
background) yet looks fine." - they are using pixel fonts
"Also, the thumbnail on the Portfolio page looks very bad
even though it wasn't resized in any way using Flash (I reduced the
size of the original image in Photoshop and changed the DPI from
200 to 72, then imported it into Flash as a jpeg." - looks fine to
me (on the unscaled version), but I don't have anything else to
compare it to - check your image compression settings in flash
(both under Publish Settings/flash tab and when you double click
the bitmap in the library you can control compression settings.
What level of compression are you using when saving from Photoshop?
The word "graphic design" looks better here
http://www.lotusgraphicdesign.net/
then here
http://www.lotusgraphicdesign.net/small.html
, but they are different sizes. Which is the original size?
Another note: "Because I was working with content already
created in Illustrator (10), I copied them over to Flash (CS3) as
vectors and resized them." if you actually imported an ai file into
flash, I know it also imports clipping masks and things of that
nature. When you resize an imported ai file, you may be getting
weird results from also resizing the clipping masks, too. When I
import an ai file, I break up everything as much as possible.
Depending on how you import your ai file, bitmaps will be created,
so make sure you stay away from bitmaps when possible when resizing
any symbol.
That's all I can really think of.