black background when I print movie clip

[ClearDesigner2]

I have a movie clip that loads a schedule. I have a print button that prints the schedule ok but then i get a black background for the rest of the page which kills my ink cartridge.

The main movie background is white.

Heres the wierd thing, when i publish the movie in Flash MX 2004 it prints perfectly with a white background. Once I upload the movie to the site and try it there, I get a black background?!?!

The site is www.physiqueplus.com and select GROUP EXERCISE > SCHEDULE to load the movie in question.

My print code is

on (release) {
	getURL("print:", "schedule");
      

}

I hope you can help me out with this annoyance

Nick

[launchpad67]

Nick, is the schedule background Not black?? It seems to be when I view it.

[ClearDesigner2]

No the schedule itself is a black box but the overall MOVIE is white.

[Thankful]

What I don't understand, how everything will look when printed out when some of your letters are white. If the background is white, I guess those white letters wouldn't be printed at all, or am I missing something here (?)



Another thing, what's the background color of your HTML which hosts your main movie ? Black ? Maybe that's why it prints out the black color for the rest of the page. Just a thought...

[ClearDesigner2]

The schedule is in black. So therefore the white text will print out onto a black box. To reiterate, the MOVIE background is white, the HTML placeholder page is also white. I have attached the FLA for you to look at too. Thanks for your time.

Nick

[Thankful]

OK, I understand your schedule movie's background is white, but what's the color of the main movie where schedule movie is being loaded ?

I'm affraid I still don't get what you are trying to achieve here. You mean schedule window is printing in black with bright letters on it as we see it in the movie ? So I understood it's how it's supposed to be... but the rest of the page shouldn't be printed at all and it's printing in black ?

If you can post a screenshots of how it looks like when printed out and how you expected it to look like, that would be great... at least, make a sketch or something with black/white areas, something simple to clear this a bit.

Thanks in advance

EDIT: Also small suggestion if I may... SKIP INTRO button and second ENTER SITE button are hard to click. Mouse pointer misses sometimes and that's because you didn't set mask of the button as a square, so each time mouse pointer passes over "empty" areas (those little holes inside letters), button becomes non-clickable. It could be very annoying especially for people on very high resolutions (where those words are quite small, therefore difficult to exactly click on letter area). Setting a square as a button mask, just like you did with first ENTER SITE button, would be much better... Just my two cents...

Regards

[ClearDesigner2]

Ok to make it even clearer as to what happens when i print from the site;

Imagine a black background and on top of that is the schedule.

In the movie there is no black background, only a black box with the schedule.

If you publish the movie you'll see for yourself that the movie background is in fact white and the only black item is the schedule.

As i said before HTML has white page properties and the Flash movie property is also set to white. That is the same for the whole site.

I dont think it could be made any clearer. See attached example of what would print out.

Thanks again....

Nick

[Thankful]

Well all I can tell you is that white background in your schedule movie have nothing to do with how it will be printed out. If you do that from a separate movie file (schedule movie) of course it will print just a movie, because it's reading your background as a white.

But as soon as you load that schedule movie as external movie into some other movie clip on your web site, things gets little bit more complicated. As you can see even that white background "disappeared"... why ? Because it's just background color, and when your flash movie is loaded as external movie clip into some other movie clip (in your case, your main movie) background is being "read" as transparent... that's why you don't have white background behind your schedule movie. Otherwise it would look awful with that white square around, right ?

Well, again, I don't know why is it printing black around your schedule movie... is it printing just black square around it or it's printing the whole page, all contents on the screen that are visible at that point ? That's why I asked you to post screenshots. It's not the same if it's printing just black square, and if it's printing all contents from the page...

[ClearDesigner2]

I cant post a screen shot of an actual printout, thats why I gave you an example. Have you tried printing it out from the site? Have your printer set to fast draft to save on ink.

Again the whole page is printed in black with the schedule on top.

Thanks

[Thankful]

I cant post a screen shot of an actual printout, thats why I gave you an example...
...
...

I know you can't do that, but that's why I wrote this in one of my previous replies to you:

...
...
...
If you can post a screenshots of how it looks like when printed out and how you expected it to look like, that would be great... at least, make a sketch or something with black/white areas, something simple to clear this a bit.
...
...
...

Again, I really can't think of anything that could cause that behaviour, except it looks like it's caused by the HTML (somehow), since it works perfectly when printed from within Flash (when not integrated into HTML). Sorry... maybe someone else has any other ideas...

[ClearDesigner2]

Ok, thanks anyway. Can anyone else help me?

[launchpad67]

The 'print function' will print Exactly what is on the screen...which in your case is a black box with white letters. It's a simple as that.
If you redesign the schedule to be white with black letters, your print will be exactly the way you want it.
I don't understand what's so hard to grasp here....It's Black! Change it to white and your set.

[ClearDesigner2]

Uhm, you are incorrect LP67, if you had read the full thread you would of seen that if printed directly from Flash it works with no problems, it is when the site is launched and working in conjunction with HTML.

Change it to white? So your answer is to have everything in white to remedy problems? Wheres the flexibility in design there?

[launchpad67]

No the schedule itself is a black box but the overall MOVIE is white.

I did read the whole post...I've been following this.
Mabey I'm crazy but, how do you expect to have a white page when you yourself said the schedule itself is black?? Doesn't matter what color the movie is...The schedule is black and will print black. Thats all I was trying to say.

Change it to white? So your answer is to have everything in white to remedy problems? Wheres the flexibility in design there?

Has nothing to do with flexibility, it has everything to do with color. If you want to print a page that is only black text and white background, then you design it that way. You don't make a black box with a schedule on it and expect the printer to print white...!! The printer will print what it see's. If there are colors on your page, it will print those colors. That's why I said I just don't understand the problem here.
You said when you test the page locally, that it prints white? How is that possible?

Not trying to be difficult here, I'm trying to help and understand. And I can't view your file because it's a different format than I use (MX).
Am I really missing something? Seems clear to me.

[ClearDesigner2]

Ok but I have quite clearly explained that the object being printed is black with white text and if it is printed in native flash it prints correctly with the surrounding areas in white (as it appears in the flash player). On the other hand once HTML starts handling it, the surrounding areas are black thus not printing correctly and exhausting ink levels.

[launchpad67]

Alright, well post the html code you're using. I guarantee it has nothing to do with that though. Other than that I have no idea how to make a black page print white, nor does the printer.

[Thankful]

Ok but I have quite clearly explained that the object being printed is black with white text and if it is printed in native flash it prints correctly with the surrounding areas in white (as it appears in the flash player). On the other hand once HTML starts handling it, the surrounding areas are black thus not printing correctly and exhausting ink levels.

I have to repeat myself one more time here and it looks like you haven't read a part of my reply in one of my previous replies to you...

What's the background color of your MAIN movie ? The one that's SCHEDULE movie clip is being loaded into... I believe it is black, and that's why your printer prints out the surrounding areas in black.

@launchpad67 - his schedule window is black with some orange and white letters on it. It's being printed corectly, but insted of printing out just that window and leave the surrounding areas in white, printer prints out everything... schedule window in black (as it supposed to) with white and orange letters, but also it prints out those areas around the window in black and it suyppose to leave them blank.

This is hot I see it happens...



@ClearDesigner2 - Also, another thought just popped up... what's the background color for your main flash movie you set in HTML. If you still don't know what I mean, take a look at screenshot (Dreamweaver, and you get those properties down there when you click on Flash object):

[launchpad67]

This guy is gonna get real tired of us...
Who cares about the small areas around the schedule!!!!! The whole window is black so it will use tons of black ink. Those small areas around the window use such a small amount compared to the whole window.
My point was, Make it white, so your printer doesn't have to print the whole thing in black, just the text.
Just redesign the damn thing and get on with it. The printer prints what it see's, so your never going to make this not use a bunch of ink...without making it white.

***I hope ClearDesign2 wasn't talking about the borders around the schedule this whole time. That's not what I've been trying to help with at all.

I'm done, good luck.

[ClearDesigner2]

Well LP if you had taken a moment to digest what was being discussed you would of realized that we are talkign about the borders and not just the actual movie.

Anyway time for progress . ....'Thankful', i am glad you are on the same page . As a test i created a new movie with just a black box and i have the same outcome when i load it into the main movie (homeIndex.swf) which for the record also has a white bg. I even set the HTML bg's for everything to white with non desireable results, this is a wierd situation.

Attached is the result of when i print the test movie from the SWF and then when i print when it is loaded in conjunction with HTML. These images are actual snapshots of the printouts from my webcam.

Any ideas Thankful?


Nick

[Thankful]

Yes I see the difference, and it's awfully lot of wasted black ink. However, I still have no idea why is it happening on your end...

I just made two simple tests. I exported your example as swf. Printed it out directly from the SWF and it works perfectly as it should. Completely white paper with just Schedule window black with orange and white letters inside.

I also made a little HTML and put exactly the same SWF file inside, executed it and it work perfectly. No problems at all. Whole HTML page is white as I set it to be, and only SCHEDULE window is printed out.

So... it means the problems appears somewhere in between. I still believe you get that problem when you load Schedule movie (external swf) into your main movie (homeIndex.swf). Somehow, who knows how, background becomes all black all of a sudden. I don't have your main movie here so I couldn't possibly test that part, and also I don't have your HTML page to be able to test everything step by step.

Edit: I just tested this situation... I made an simulation. I created main.swf (main movie) and loaded schedule.swf movie in it using this line:

loadMovie("schedule.swf",2);

Also I made a simple HTML page (index.html) where I loaded main.swf

Background of the HTML page is set to white, and background for main.swf movie is set to white inside HTML (take a look at those options in the screenshot I posted in one of my previous replies), as well as both swf movies background is set to white inside the actual FLA files.

Of course, I shrinked your schedule movie a bit so I don't have to spend my black ink for nothing ...anyway...
Guess what ? It's printing ok... it's printing just schedule window (schedule.swf) and main movie (main.swf) is totally invisible... just as it should be, right ? I mean you want to print out just schedule movie, am I right ?

It's working fine on my end. I really have no clue why isn't that working on your end. See attached picture I took 2 minutes ago how it is printed out when I tried to print it our from within the HTML. Of course I clicked at your printer button up in the upper left corner.



You'll notice I didn't print whole picture, and that's just because I wanted to show it as large as possible and didn't want to spend additional ink just for testing, but you can see that there is no black color around the schedule window (on sides). Trust me I printed out small picture as well and that one was printed out in full... no problems at all...

Sourcefiles inside the zip, you can find in attachment. I don't know if it's going to be of any help to you, but sure it works how it suppose to work. So you may wanna try to search somewhere inside your main movie properties one more time.

Regards