Weird problem

[evolbeagle]

Okay, I have this four-frame menu swf I'm making in KoolMoves. The first frame has a stop movie event on it. The only way you get to any of the other 3 frames is by clicking on a button. It works exactly as intended when viewed with the stand alone player option. That is, it loads and stops on the first frame and doesn't go anywhere unless I click a button.

But...

When I publish the movie as a swf with html I have a problem. When I load the html page containing the menu swf (and for the moment the html page contains nothing else but this swf), the menu always cycles through one time and then returns to frame 1 and stops; it plays once and then stops at frame 1 on the second pass. So I know the stop event is there or it would just keep looping, right? I also know it's there 'cause I've looked at it eighteen hundred times since I discovered this problem.

Now, I've used this approach before and it worked just fine. But I can't get it to work here. I've tried 100% preloading the movie, but I still get once around the block before stopping. I've tried changing the html loop code to false, but that only makes it stop at the last frame instead of coming back around and stopping at frame 1.

So what gives?

My work-around is to insert a copy of frame 1 and put the stop action on frame 2. But it's freakin' me out that it won't stop on frame 1 the other way without playing though once.

[johnie]

I have noticed the same problem from time to time. Often the actions on Frame one are ignored by the Flash Player. I did the same work around that you have mentioned.

I think the problem is a quirk in the Flash player instead of the Kool Moves though.

[evolbeagle]

At least I know I'm not imagining things. Now that I think about it, the times I've done this before and had it work both of the following were true:

1. The movie had a 100% preloader.

2. The movie file was large enough so that it didn't start playing right away (i.e. took a few seconds to load first).

Maybe with this little 12k menu swf it's just blowing right by the stop before it can read it somehow and then picks it up on the second pass. But anyway, the work-around seems to do the trick.

[Bob Hartzell]

One thing that has changed is that with KoolMoves version 1.75 I am exporting swfs as Flash version 4. Before it was version 3. I remember someone mentioning this problem before when it was version 3.

I think the key point is that it works OK in the stand-alone player but not in a web browser player. I don't think I have any control over this problem.


[Edited by Bob Hartzell on 01-17-2001 at 09:09 AM]