Publishing problem!

[FHFGhost]

I Work for General Dynamics and I have created a website made entirely from Flash. Everytime I updated the flash file and publish it from the development server to the production server nobody can see the changes, unless they delete all temporary internet files from the internet options dialog. Is this the only way everybody will get the latest version of the website or is there another way. Currently I have to send everybody an email that tells them in order to see the latest they must delete all there temporary internet files. And that doesn't go over very good. Are there any alternatives?

[aaron.martone]

First, check to make sure the browsers are setup to request a check for new content EACH VISIT. Secondly, make sure your ASP/HTML pages use META to tell the browser NO-CACHE. And Thirdly, make sure you're not behind a proxy server, whose job it is to take popular requests, store their results and server that up to people requesting likewise rather than tax the bandwidth and make a new request.

[FHFGhost]

I'm not familiar with META, could you you explain alittle please?

[aaron.martone]

Place the following HTML code into your document INSIDE the [head] tags:

[meta http-equiv="Pragma" content="no-cache"]
[meta http-equiv="expires" content="0"]

Depending on some browsers, this may tell it not to cache or keep a local copy of the document inside the browser. So that each time it visits the page, rather than copying it to local HDD for fast reference, it makes a server request (thus getting the new info) each time....

* note please replace [ and ] with the less than and greater than tag openers and closers. This board keeps converting them into actual output, so I can't give you the EXACT code.

[FHFGhost]

I don't see the html, but don't forget the webpage is made of Flash entirely. So the code will have to be in the form of action scripting?

[danny71]

THere is a pretty cool solution to this.

Step 1:
Create an 'entry' flash movie the same size, frame rate and background color of your main movie but is empty with NOTHING on any layers... place only one layer for actionscript.

Step 2:
In frame 2 (sometimes flash will skip over frame 1 of a movie, so i always put any script starting in frame 2) of this 'entry' movie put this code:

rn = Math.round(Math.random()*1000000);
loadMovieNum("your_movie.swf?reload="+rn, 1);

Step 3:

In frame 3 put stop();

This code appends a number ranging from 1-1,000,000 to the end of your SWF. This in effect is calling a new swf each time but is loading the same SWF. In this way a new movie will always load with your new content.

This seems confusing...try it and you'll see how this will avoid the cache problem.

Cheers.

[danny71]

I should also mention this "entry" movie with nothing in it but the code, will be your index page.

Your main movie swf this code is calling must be in the same directory.