Turbine vars in URL do not work sometimes

[WebDream777]

I sent my FLA source to PacBlue support, but thought I'd share my problem for all to benefit as well. One out of every 10 templates we make, when I add a Turbine variable “mailto:{Email}” in the URL of text field “{Email_Label}” , it fails to show that text at all. After this happens, there’s nothing I can do to get it working. I have to start over with a new template.

Anyone else have this problem?

[jdiogo]

We've done a preview on the Flash editor and the field doesn't display like the others; we've also cleaned-up the URL from mailto:{Email} - it also doesn't appear, and it is now a normal text field. We've also done a binary disassembly of a Turbine-generated SWF file and the substitution is being correctly done.

We've also prepared an example that does what you describe (through Turbine) and works ok - the example is attached.

This leds us to believe it to be either an editing problem (for example suppose with masking layers, but we found none) or a Flash editor bug, since it also happens on plain flash files. It's really a weird problem but it doesn't seem Turbine related...

I've noticed that the problem goes away if one moves the text field into inside the "bar1" movie clip, maybe this solves the problem for you.

[WebDream777]

Yes, I agree it seems more like an inconsistency with how Macromedia Flash is compiling the FLA or SWT. And I won’t go into it, but you know Macromedia is full of inconsistencies, and they don’t support their products or care about backwards compatibility. Macromedia’s idea of support is giving us lots of “workarounds.” Just go to the support site and you’ll see 1 patch or bug fix per product if you’re lucky, and then 100’s of published workarounds!

So anyway, I found my workaround for the text/URL problem. I load the turbine variable as an ActionScript variable and do a simple ‘on release / geturl’ button event, and I don't have to use the text field's URL. The problem only happens once out of 40 templates I make, but I think I’ll start using this alternate method anyway.

I only wish Macromedia's support was as good as Blue*Pacific !!

Thanks!