emailing a customised picture?

[draah]

help! I was on www.altoids.com the other day and was fascinated by a little interactive flash movie they had which allowed a user to customise their own muscle car (colour, background, add stickers etc.). All this is pretty easy to do. HOWEVER the bit I was interested in was once the user had converted their muscle car then they could email the result of their efforts in the form of a swf onward to a friend and this is the bit that I would like to be able to learn about! does anyone have any suggestions on how this is done or any other similar solutions??? many thanks!

[pellepiano]

Are you shure they emailed a swf and not a link to a swf online. Thats the normal way to do it.

Your changes to the car are stored online in a database and the recipient gets a mail where the adress includes some variables so the database can customize the swf so it looks like what you did to it. Similar to ecards.

Sending swf's is a risky business as youll never know who is able to see them.

You can do this without a database to, just store the variables in a textfile. Im shure there is even a way to do it by just mail too.

[draah]

I see... the link idea sounds interesting. how is it done?

[pellepiano]

In short

The recipient would get a email that says they have got a car or ecard. Then theres a link in the mail like
http://www.mySite.com/yourCustomCar....ack&body=green and so on

Clicking this link woill send the variables to the html page ( yourCustomCar.html ) where you can have a javascript that transfer them in to the Flash file.

The Flash file with the car could be built so each part of the car is a separate movieclip each with framelables like red green blue etc

The first frame of the swf would then have a set of goto actions like

wheelMC.gotoAndStop(tire);

The value of variable tire is in this case black so the movieclip wheelMC will go to the framelable black.


Then you have to build the part of the swf where someone can build the car or choose colors or whatever.

[draah]

I see. Thanks very much for that. Is there anywhere on the net which would be able to show me how to do this or do you reckon it might be too complex for me, I don't really know much javascript. Thanks again for that explanation

[pellepiano]

The javascript embed code to get the variables into Flash I can post here, but the Flash file needs some programming skills.

Use this embed code for the swf on the html and all variables that comes with the url string will get passed to the flash file.

The code would not display on this forumso I had to wrap it up in some other tags.

   is not included in the code (delete that)
[/code] 

in the end (delete that too).

<script language="JavaScript">
document.write ('<OBJECT classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" '
+'codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=5,0,0,0" '
+'WIDTH=750 HEIGHT=500> <PARAM NAME=movie VALUE="knock.swf'+document.location.search+'">'
+'<PARAM NAME=quality VALUE=high>'
+'<EMBED src="knock.swf' +document.location.search+'" ' 
+'quality=high  WIDTH=750 HEIGHT=500 '
+'TYPE="application/x-shockwave-flash"></EMBED></OBJECT>')
</script>
[/code] 

[Xample]

I'm actually trying to do something like this. Does anyone know where there might be a tutorial on how this is done or possibly some sample files so that I can sift through them? Thanks.

-xample

[pellepiano]

Ive never seen a tutorial on this subject. The javascript I picked up from a site some years ago and revolutionized my head. I managed to build a ecard service with it and Flash, without any serverside scripts, just mail. I can answer question about the basics on doing this if its any help.

//Ex
http://www.pellepiano.com/vykort/

[Xample]

here is an example of what I'm looking to build:

http://buzztone.atlanticrecords.com/...ic-records.com

the user customizes the card, sends it to a friend, and the friend can see ecaxtly what was created. The friend can then create his/her own card and email it, so on and so forth.

[pellepiano]

For the Flash file its pretty straightforward.
When you select a head or body you set a variable like

// For head 2
head_no=2;

You also add the x and y positions where it was placed


So everything that is selectable sets variables telling what it is and where its placed.

Then there are two ways to go. Either save the variables to a textfile or database with a unique number so the person that will pick it up can enter the number and the correct data (or textfile) is retrieved from the database making Flash place the symbols according to the variables.

The other way is to send a email directly to the recipient in which there is a long urlstring containing all the variables and messages. He or she then clicks the urlstring and is taken to a html page where the swf is embedded with the javascript code in the earlier post, which makes the variables in the urlstring go directly into Flash that can recreate the graphic coices and positions.

All this will of course require quite some scripting in Flash, but is very doable.

[Xample]

i would love to see how its done.

[pellepiano]

Well i dont have a tutorial or example file so you'll have to ask specific questions.

[Xample]

alright. ill start building something and when i run into issues i'll throw them out there.