Keeping your project filesize down
Do this: periodically use the 'duplicate project' option (available on the starting 'projects' panel) to create a new, fresh copy of your project data. Chances are that you will see a substantial decrease in fliesize with the new copy. This is a documented point, however one that is easily overlooked and very valuable to know. It is caused becasue - like most Macromedia applications - old data is not weeded out when a file is saved. New data is just written onto the end of the old. Duplicating a project is the equivalent of performing a 'Save As...', at which time ONLY current, relevant project data is written into the new file.

Another good way, I found, was instead of importing jpegs as backgrounds or sprites, first save the jpeg into a single frame swf file and import that instead. This reduced the single file size (when viewing the cast list in director) from 1.3mb (for a 100k jpg?) to about 80kb.

Lol... yes, you refer to one of the annoying quirks of Director. ALL pixel images are stored within a Director cast as true bitmaps; that is: Director stores the color value of every pixel – regardless of compression schemes applied to the image upon import. This is why I have always suggested using .BMP images... even if you use a compressed JPG, it will be *in essence* converted to a BMP for storage within director, so all that compression did for you was degrade your image quality. The SWF trick is clever. Good idea!