mmreed
02-01-2002, 09:45 PM
Ive been discussing this with Bob, and he suggested I post this to the forum:
Bob:
this object can be dragged in the web browser preview with v5 plugin, but wont drag in the Player preview. I have version 4 player... is draggable objects only functioning in ver5 player? How will this be handled for people that only have v4 player or browser plugin? If I make a swf for the web, I dont want to force people to download the v5 plugin if they already have v4... your thoughts?
-- basically, I am wondering the best way to approach the
"I dont want to force people to download the v5
>plugin if they already have v4..." issue.
johnie
02-02-2002, 12:03 AM
Actually the most curent version of the Player is the Flash 6 Beta player. There were a couple of versions of the Flash 5 player. A new version of the Flash Player has been realesed about every year or longer. If the User is on Flash 4 still they are behind and should realize that being behind would limit the functionality of the player as it is with all players including Real, QT, MS Media, Acrobat, Adobe SVG, SUN JRE, ETC. A user with the Acrobat 4 player would not expect PDF 5 files to function properly and fully just as a User of Qt 4 would not expect MOV 5 files to operate without flaws. In case you are wondering most designers just don't worry about it as they have been responsible by adding a version check on their page.
None of the Actionscripts will work on the Flash 4 player but they do work in the Flash 6 Beta and Flash 5 players as KoolMoves Actionscripting is based on the Flash 5 SWF file format. A lot of scripting just will not work in the Flash 4 Player as it was not built to handle it and the SWF 4 actionscript model is quite different and signifigantly more limited than the SWF 5 AS model. If it puts your mind at ease a lot of people with the Flash player already have the Flash 5 version as it was shipped with IE 5.5 and NS 6.1 and higher, Windows ME, Windows XP, MAC OS X, and many newer Linux distros. Every Flash 5 generated HTML and SWF also makes produces code to make sure they are updated also. This mostly effects OS2, Irex, Amiga, and and Pocket PC users as Windows, Mac, Solaris, Unix, and Linux all have Flash 5 Players available to them plus the few users who refuse to update for whatever reasons they may have.
Basically what needs to be done to ensure they have the Flash 5 or higher player is that the HTML that is generated from Koolmoves needs to be checked so that you are sure it is updated to the Flash 5 player... Its as easy as changing 2 numbers if it is wrong.
The version number in the object tag should read
CODEBASE="http://active.macromedia.com/flash5/cabs/
swflash.cab#version=5,0,0,0"
If I'm not mistaken this is the defualt setting in the HTML export option.
anyhow when the viewer sees this if they have MSIE the browser will automatically inform the user that thier version of the player is out of date and offer to update them and if they have NS they will be asked to update via the NS Plugin finder as long as the header in the SWF says its Flash 5, which I am pretty sure it does.
If they don't want to update the player then they will see the animation and the Flash 4 and lower native actions (everything but AS) will work for them with No other observable issue. If a User still has the Flash 3 player installed everything except dynamic text, Load Dynamic text, Preloaders, and Send Variables should work.
[Edited by johnie on 02-02-2002 at 12:05 AM]
gorky2
02-03-2002, 03:09 AM
Originally posted by johnie
Basically what needs to be done to ensure they have the Flash 5 or higher player is that the HTML that is generated from Koolmoves needs to be checked so that you are sure it is updated to the Flash 5 player... Its as easy as changing 2 numbers if it is wrong.
The version number in the object tag should read
CODEBASE="http://active.macromedia.com/flash5/cabs/
swflash.cab#version=5,0,0,0"
If I'm not mistaken this is the defualt setting in the HTML export option.
anyhow when the viewer sees this if they have MSIE the browser will automatically inform the user that thier version of the player is out of date and offer to update them and if they have NS they will be asked to update via the NS Plugin finder as long as the header in the SWF says its Flash 5, which I am pretty sure it does.
As far as I know only IE has this auto-update feature. Some times ago a tested a clock published by Hillary(??) in a thread of this forum (donīt know which tread exactly). this clock as far as I remeber was programmed with actionscript in an older beta (beta 2.8??). It worked fine with IE und player 5 and just stopped working in Netscape 4.7 with player 4. BUT: Macromedia has published a free downloadable detection set on their website. AND: I agree with Johnie: I you have player 4 you can not expect version5 swf to work!
Gorky