Flash

Ironically, part of the world's love-hate relationship with Flash is based on misconceptions. Many web developers and users don't realize the extent to which Flash works with browsers. In this chapter, we'll see how to integrate Flash with st...

More than 80% of web users use Internet Explorer (IE 5 or later) according to W3Schools (http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp), and more than 93% of all users have the Flash Player 6 or later installed according to Macromedi...

It does this by looking for a particular installation of the Flash Player. The problem is that prerequisites may have to be addressed before the sniffer itself works correctly. Flash content that would have worked perfectly well without a sni...

This degree of ubiquity is achieved around 18 months after the release of a new Flash Player. Although the Flash authoring environment allows you to create content for previous versions of the Flash Player, it has no facility to allow you ...

Additionally, you may not know about several important little checkboxes and requesters that are hidden in the Flash interface. Changing the Preference Defaults Select EditPreferences to alter the default preferences using the Pref...

The reasons for this are: Flash performance is based on the number of pixels that change every frame. By keeping the SWF movie's area modest and forcing nonscaling, you are able to create a fast site with a more or less constant frame rate...

One of the most common initial problems a new designer faces is centering the SWF in the browser [Hack #90] . Although there are several ways to do this, all have at least some issues. This hack shows the options and the hacks needed to get ...

Although dynamically resizing the SWF to fit the browser window may seem simple, not many people seem to be able to make it work properly. So let's get hacking. Although the Flash Player has the ability to resize the SWF to match the siz...

Flash MX 2004 allows you to use CSS formatting, which supports text that looks like standard HTML links. Unfortunately, they also act like standard HTML links—they will jump to pages outside the Flash SWF. That is, unless you know how to use ...

Part of the design intent of Flash MX (and Flash Player 6) was to make Flash more accessible. Among other things, Macromedia added support for named anchors. Most designers know anchors by their HTML-based implementation. An anchor is ...

The browser does not give your SWF browser focus until you select the SWF, usually by clicking on it. This means that your SWF cannot respond to keypresses until it has been clicked on at least once, something that can be undesirable in a ...

This hack shows how to implement shortcuts with a minimum of code. Detecting keypresses is a little more complex than just looking for a key being pressed. We have to be able to detect keyboard combinations, such as Ctrl-Q, and detect both wh...