Category Archives: Useful

SWFAddress Gotcha: Navigating Directly to a Deep Link Breaks Preloader

There is a known issue with SWFAddress 2.2: When navigating directly to a deep link, the preloader does not display or jumps straight to 100%. When using the ‘#’ symbol in the URL, the browser loads the main SWF twice which cause the preloader to break.

The fix is to use a mini pre-preloader as supplied in the SWFAddress samples (‘samples/cs3/c.fla’). The mini-loader is loaded twice but since it’s so small it doesn’t matter. I’m adding this information here since the issue is pretty buried in the SWFAddress forum.

[UPDATE] OK, another SWFAddress gotcha by virtue of obscurity: If your back button is not working, check you have specified the ‘id’ attribute in the swfobject.embedSWF() call. The ‘id’ attribute can be any string.

swfobject.embedSWF('c.swf?path=main.swf', 'flashContent', '100%', '100%', '9.0.45', null, {}, {}, {id: 'myId'});

New Photoshop Scripts for Airtight Viewers

script ui

Jeff Tranberry over at Adobe just built a new set of Photoshop scripts for SimpleViewer, TiltViewer, AutoViewer and PostcardViewer. These scripts allow you to easily create Airtight galleries with Photoshop CS3 and up. Just select your image folder and gallery options to instantly create a gallery.

Renaming the Default Output SWF with Flex Builder 3

  • Posted On: October 27th, 2008
  • Posted In: Flash, Useful

If you want to change the default filename of the output SWF that Flex Builder generates, you can use the -output compiler option [Project Properties-> ActionScript Compiler -> Additional compiler arguments]. Note that relative paths don’t work, so you need to enter a full absolute path to the SWF:

-output=C:\dev\project\bin-debug\myname.swf

See the full list of Flex Builder 3 additional compiler options here.

Fixing "Flex Builder requires a more recent version of the Flash Player" Error

If you uncheck “Generate HTML wrapper file” in your Flex Builder Project ActionScript Compiler options (which is good idea if you want to use SWFObject to wrap your SWF rather than the crud that Flex Builder generates), Flex Builder uses the system default application for opening SWFs when you run/debug your project.

If you get the “Flex Builder requires a more recent version of the Flash Player. You might need to install the Flash Player or reinstall Flex Builder.” error, the solution is to set the system default application for opening SWFs to point to the latest debug player. To do this on Windows right click a SWF in explorer. The latest debug player may be in the following location: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Flash CS3\Players\sa_flashplayer_9_debug.exe, otherwise download the latest Projector content debugger and point to it.

Here is some more Mac specific help

SimpleViewer v1.8.5 Released

SV grab

When I first created SimpleViewer back in 2003, it was mainly a reaction against the multitude of bad web photo galleries that were out there. The idea was to create a gallery that was simple, unobtrusive and usable. I did not expect 5 years later that it would be getting over 15,000 downloads a week!.

This popularity has spurred me to keep improving the gallery. The 1.8.5 updates include:

  • Added full localization support
  • Allow direct links to images within gallery
  • Added PNG and GIF support (publishing to Flash 8 )
  • Added 3 new XML options: vAlign, hAlign, navPadding. These improve layout for small format galleries.
  • Added 5 new Pro AS options: showCaptionOnRollover, captionUnderThumbs, captionFontSize, titleFontSize, captionPadding
  • Allow setting caption and title colors via HTML font tags

As usual, these new features are mainly based on the awesome feedback that comes from the forums. Unfortunately due to the high volume of posts I do not have time to answer each one, but I do read every post and take note of the issues raised.

SimpleViewer-Pro customers are notified via email when there is an update. All 1.x updates are provided free of charge.

Please download the latest version, give it a whirl and let me know if you see any bugs. Thanks!

AutoViewer Update

I’ve spruced up AutoViewer a little as part of my spring cleaning. The biggest change is that captions now support HTML formatting, including hyperlinks. The UI was tweaked to be more useful in small format situations (see example below). Also added localization support and some new config options. See a list of all the changes here. Most of the new features are based on feedback posted to the autoviewer forum.

AutoViewer-Pro customers are notified via email when there is an update. All 1.x updates are provided free of charge.

[kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.airtightinteractive.com/projects/autoviewer/examples/small/autoviewer.swf” width=”400″ height=”300″ fversion=”8″ bgcolor=”#000000″ fvars=” xmlURL= http://www.airtightinteractive.com/projects/autoviewer/examples/small/gallery.xml”/]