Flash 5 does not load xml data consistently

[Gis]

Hi,

We are finding lots of inconsistencies with Flash 5 when loading XML data in movies that are loaded into a base movie dynamically.

It seems that depending on what windows and ie version you run, the data gets either passed into the base level movie (parent) or into the movie that actually requested the XML (Child) data.

We now have found a way of making it work, but it is a completely illogical solution which shouldn't work.

Does anybody have any experience with these bugs and have some sort of matrix that shows which combinations have the above effect.

The whole point of using Flash was to get away from having to do 6 different version of a website for different OS's and browsers, now it seems Macromedia hasn't really managed to create a plugin anymore that works the same accross all browsers and platforms.

Thanks,

Gis

[NETbreed]

Unfortunately there has always been some subtle [and some not so subtle] differences between the plugins for different browser/os combinations. A lot of this is not down to Macromedia, however, but bugs in the browser code that cannot be worked around.

For example, the ActiveX plugin used for IE on Windows does not fill in HTTP_REFERER information that can be processed by server-side scripts. This is disabled in this version because there is a bug in the plug-in handler for IE 4 that crashes when this is attempted, and because MM are commited to supporting IE4 for the forseeable future.

As for the specific inconsistencies you've metioned, I haven't encountered any of this problems. This is probably more due to the fact that I am still involved with writing my XML Socket Server and less concerned with browser/front-end compatibility at this stage.

FYI I did some digging around in the MM support section and could find only one reference to XML that was outside of the Actionscript Dictionary and the examples:


XML
In 5.0r30 of Flash Player 5, XML.send and XML.sendAndLoad always sent MIME content type application/x-www-form-urlencoded, which is undesirable for some XML servers. In 5.0r42, XML objects have a new property, contentType, which may be set to any desired MIME content type (such as text/xml).

XML onLoad method is now properly called if the XML object lives in a SWF file that was loaded via the loadMovieNum command


Maybe it would be good to get a few users from this forum to go about testing and seeking out these bugs you mentioned and creating a matrix for all users as you suggested.

Regards,

Steve

[Gis]

Hi Steve,

Thank you for that.
I will get my guys to post their solution here soon.
If anybody else would like to investigate this that would be great.

The site we are doing uses alot of loadmovies rather than using Generator, so that the user doesn't need to keep donwloading complete new files but still gets served a dynamic user experience. (and because of the horendous cost od Generator for a large site!)

Anybody that would like to get this matrix together, please help.

Thanks,

Gis

[birdman75]

I'm having a similiar problem. It seems that a test file that parses a small XML file and displays it that we're working on only works in Netscape 4.7. I have the latest IE player and an old Netscape one, so this makes no sense at all.

If anyone can point me towards documentation on this subject, I'd love to see it. I'm hoping that this problem will just go away.

[birdman75]

I'm having a similiar problem. It seems that a test file that parses a small XML file and displays it that we're working on only works in Netscape 4.7. I have the latest IE player and an old Netscape one, so this makes no sense at all.

If anyone can point me towards documentation on this subject, I'd love to see it. I'm hoping that this problem will just go away.

[balderiano]

I have suffered that strange problems while using XML on movie clips that were loaded inside another movie clip, but these have dissapeared after installing version 5.0.42 (over IE5 on W2K).

Hope this helps,

[kheckendorn]

I just ran into what I think is the same problem today.

I have XML loaded into 4 different sections of my site. When I created it months ago everything worked fine. Now I find that the 3 sections that are in loaded movies don't work in the newest browsers - IE 6 or Netscape 6 but the 1 in my main movie still works.

All 4 sections still work in IE 5.5 and Netscape 4.7. I have to find a solution for this ASAP. HELP!!! This makes no sense to me that is works in old browsers but not new browsers. If you have a solution please post.

-Karen Heckendorn
http://www.visualanalytics.com

[br]

I too have ran into this problem. The .xml file loads up an array into the base movie as follows:

myData = new XML();
myData.load("mydata.xml");
//
function onLoadDoMy()

It all works fine locally, and with IE4.5 on the Mac. Other combos never seem to get the XML data at all.

I had to table the XML idea, and embed the data in the old way just to finish the project. I'ld like to get this thing going again, though, since XML objects seem to be a slick way to deal with tons of data.

Regards,

br

[kheckendorn]

I finally got some of my problem fixed with my XML loading. I got the XML in the loaded submovies to load atleast in Netscape 6 where they had stopped working.

Instead of having:

_root.textbox.text.TextDisplay += "...

I changed the "_root." (which worked fine until the newest browsers came out) to the level # "_level2."

_level2.textbox.text.TextDisplay += ...


I don't know why this would work in some browsers but not in others, but that is what I'm finding. My boss had problems in IE 6 Beta but I downloaded it and it already worked, so we are still working on that, but hopefully that will be solved with the real IE 6 version.

-Karen Heckendorn
http://www.visualanalytics.com