Ariaware announced a new tool that significantly reduces the size of Macromedia Flash files and Web sites based on Flash.

The tool, called Ariaware Optimizer, was developed by three key Flash experts: Aral Balkan, Peter Hall and Burak Kalayci. The group said the tool results in an overall file size reduction whenever an application or site has two or more SWFs that share classes.

The company said that SWFs that use the Version 2 Components will experience the most optimization, since they share many core classes. Sites that are primarily HTML-based will see less of an improvement, but as long as they contain some SWFs that use classes, the tool will optimize them as well.

Ariaware Optimizer for Windows is available now and costs $995 for the enterprise version and $195 for a “freelancer” version.