Digital Workshop

Hi, could you please DW correct me if I am wrong.. (or anybody else who knows for that matter!)

I have to embed quite a lot of Flash Videos that I have created in Opus Pub (XE 4.0) as part of a project I am working for a client. I understand that I can do this using three ways:

1-Creating a video field
2-Creating a Doc field
3-Creating a browser field pointing to a html page where I can embed the flash swf file.

My understanding is that if I use Option 1 the user must have Quicktime installed in their system and if I use Option 2 the user must have flashplugin installed. Obviously Option 3 takes the flashplugin from the user browser.
Am I correct?

Thanks
German

Hi,

Thank you for your enquiry.

If you import a Flash file using a Video object, the publication will need to establish a connection to the QuickTime engine to display this content. If QuickTime is not correctly installed on the end-user's system, they will be unable to view the result.

If you import a Flash file using a DocView or Browser object, the publication will use the Flash Player plug-in for the user's default Internet browser to display the file.

I hope this helps. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any further queries.

Kind regards,

Robin,

I appreciate that the majority of home users now have the Flash plugin, but not all our Business users do.

Have you got a detection routine to find out if Flash is there before starting a presentation? Or could you point me in the right direction to find one?

Thanks, Linda

Hi Linda,

Thank you for your enquiry.

One solution is to simply display a small sample Flash movie along with a message stating "If you cannot see this animation, please click here to download and install the latest Flash Player plug-in". You could then direct the user to the Flash Player Download Page (http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer).

One downside of this solution is that this may take the window focus away from your publication and the user may have to minimise any pages which have appeared to get back to your pubication.

A more elegant solution would be to download the Flash Detection Kit from http://www.macromedia.com/software/flas ... ection_kit and use the HTML Method provided with this kit within a DocView object. This method consists of a HTML file which contains all of the necesary code to detect the latest version of the Flash Player plug-in. If the latest version is already installed, an 'Installation Successful' message is displayed (you can edit the HTML if you want to display a custom message).

If the latest version is not installed, the user is taken to an upgrade_flash.htm page which prompts them to download the latest Flash Player plug-in. However, all of these pages should display within the DocView object and the user will not be taken out of the publication.

More information regarding the configuration and customisation of these files can be viewed in the relevant README documents supplied with the Detection Kit.

I hope this helps. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any further queries.

Kind regards,