<object: This is the opening tag containing the ID code and locations of the ActiveX control for the Flash Player. Note that this opening tag includes the attributes lettered B through F.

classid: This lengthy string is the unique ActiveX identification code. If you are inserting the <object> tag by hand in a text editor, make sure that you copy this ID string exactly.

codebase: Like the codebase attribute of a Java <applet> tag, this attribute of the <object> tag specifies the location of the ActiveX control installer file (.cab) as a URL. Notice that the #version=10,0,0,0 portion of the URL indicates that the Flash Player version 10 should be used. You can also specify specific minor releases, such as #version=6,0,65,0, which would require Flash Player 6.0 r65 ActiveX control or later. If the visitor doesn't have the ActiveX control already installed, Internet Explorer automatically downloads the control from this URL.

width and height: These attributes control the actual width and height, respectively, of the Flash movie as it appears on the Web page. If no unit of measurement is specified, these values are in pixels. If the % character is added to the end of each value, the attribute adjusts the Flash movie to the corresponding percent of the browser window. For example, if 100 percent was the value for both width and height, the Flash movie fills the entire browser, except for the browser gutter. See Colin Moock's tutorial at the Web archive for this book to learn how to minimize this gutter thickness.

id: This attribute of the <object> tag assigns a JavaScript/VBScript identifier to the Flash movie so that it can be controlled by DHTML JavaScript/VBScript functions. By default, this attribute's value is the name of the actual .swf file, without the .swf extension. Each element on a DHTML page should have a unique id or name attribute. I discuss the name attribute in the next section.

align: This attribute of the <object> tag determines how the Flash movie aligns on the HTML document. The acceptable values for this attribute are left, right, top, bottom, or middle. As with <img> tags in HTML, the align attribute gives very loose layout control. It's likely that you'll want to rely on other HTML tags and cascading style sheets (CSS) to position a Flash movie with other HTML elements.

<param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" />: This is the first set of <param> subtags within the <object></object> tags. Each parameter tag has a unique name= setting, not to be confused with JavaScript names or ids. allowScriptAccess controls how the Flash movie can access JavaScript or VBScript functions contained within the HTML document. A Flash movie can try to invoke a JavaScript or VBScript function by using an ActionScript fscommand() or getURL() line of code. There are three values supported: always, never, and sameDomain. The value always enables the Flash movie to access scripts on the page, and never prohibits the Flash movie from accessing scripts. The value sameDomain, which is the default value, enables a Flash movie to access scripts on the page only if the Flash movie resides on the same domain as the HTML page containing the movie. The allowScriptAccess attribute is supported by Flash Player 6 r40 and later.

<param name="allowFullScreen" value="false" />: This parameter specifies if the Flash movie can utilize full screen mode when playing in a Web browser window. If set to false, a Flash movie cannot play outside of the browser in full screen mode. If set to true, a Flash movie's stage can take over the entire desktop screen area and play outside of a Web browser window. You must script full screen capability within your Flash movie to use this feature. The ActionScript 3.0 version of the FLVPlayback component in Flash CS5, for example, includes a full screen feature. The allowFullScreen attribute is supported only by Flash Player 9 r28 or later.

<param name="movie" value="home.swf" />: This parameter determines which Flash movie file (.swf) is loaded into the document. The value attribute specifies the filename of the Flash movie, as a relative or absolute URL. Note that you can pass Flash variables to the movie directly by specifying them after the filename. For example, home.swf?firstName=Jeremy passes a variable named firstName with a string value of Jeremy to the root timeline (that is, _level0). You can use the newer flashvars (item S) HTML attribute to do this type of data transfer as well.

<param name="play" value="false" />: This optional parameter tells the Flash Player whether it should start playing the Flash movie as it downloads. If value equals false, the Flash movie loads in a "paused" state, just as if a stop() action was placed on the first frame. If the value equals true, the Flash Player starts playing the movie as soon as it starts to stream into the browser. If this tag is omitted, the Flash Player behaves as if play equals true.

<param name="loop" value="false" />: This optional setting tells the Flash Player whether the Main Timeline should repeat when the playhead reaches the last frame. If value equals false, the playhead does not loop. If value equals true, the playhead loops. If this parameter tag is omitted, the Flash Player by default loops playback of the Main Timeline.

<param name="menu" value="false" />: This setting controls the display of the Flash Player contextual menu that can be invoked by right-clicking (Windows) or Control+clicking (Mac) the Flash movie in the Web browser. If you set this option to false, the menu displays the options shown in Figure 19.1. If you set this option to true, all the options are available to the end user, as shown in Figure 19.2. Also, the player's Settings option is available in both modes of the menu.

Figure 19.1. The Flash Player menu with control options disabled

Figure 19.2. The Flash Player menu with control options enabled

<param name="quality" value="high" />: This parameter controls how the Flash movie's artwork renders within the browser window. value can be low, autolow, autohigh, high, or best. Most Flash movies on the Web use the high value because this setting forces the Flash Player to render the movie elements anti-aliased. For a full description of each of the quality settings, refer to Chapter 20, "Publishing Flash Movies."

<param name="scale" value="noborder" />: This optional parameter controls how the Flash movie scales in the window defined by the width and height attributes of the opening <object> tag. Its value can be showall, noborder, exactfit, or noscale. If this entire subtag is omitted, the Flash Player treats the movie as if the showall default setting was specified. The showall setting fits the Flash movie within the boundaries of the width and height dimensions without any distortion to the original aspect ratio of the Flash movie. Again, refer to Chapter 18 for a complete description of the scale settings and how they work within the dimensions of a Flash movie.

<param name="salign" value="lt" />: This parameter controls the alignment of the Flash movie within the space allocated to the viewing area of the movie in the browser window. For example, if you size your Flash movie to use 100 percent of the width and height of the browser window, a value of lt aligns the Flash movie to the left and top of the browser window. The acceptable values for this parameter are shown in the following list. For more information, refer to our coverage in Chapter 18, "Publishing Flash Movies."

<param name="wmode" value="transparent" />: This Player option works with all versions of the Flash Player if you are using Internet Explorer (version 3 or later) for Windows, or with Flash Player 6 r65 or later on Internet Explorer, Netscape, and most Mozilla-based browsers. If you are targeting an audience that uses these browsers, you can control how the Flash movie's background color appears on top of the HTML or DHTML elements on the Web page. There are three acceptable values:

<param name="devicefont" value="true" />: This feature controls how Flash text appears in the browser window and works only on the Windows operating system. Like the device fonts with the Flash authoring environment (_sans, _serif, and _typewriter), this option can display any and all embedded text to system fonts such as Times and Arial. To do this, set value to true. To disable device font rendering in this fashion, set value to false. If this tag is omitted from the HTML, the value defaults to false. Finally, the rules of Flash device fonts apply to system device fonts as well. For example, device or system fonts cannot be masked, rotated, or manipulated with the Transform panel or the Property inspector.

<param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" />: This parameter name, bgcolor, controls the background color of the Flash movie. If you published an HTML document via the Publish command, the value is automatically set to the background color specified by the Modify

<param name="flashvars" value="title=My%20Flash%Movie" />: This Flash Player 6 and later attribute enables you to declare variables within the Flash movie when it loads into the Web browser. flashvars stands for "Flash Variables." This feature enables you to circumvent the browser URL length limitation for declaring variables in the Flash movie's filename, as I discuss in item I of this list. For example, you can use client-side (for example, JavaScript) or server-side (for example, ColdFusion, ASP, PHP) scripting to dynamically write the value for this tag in your HTML, passing information from databases into the Flash movie at load time.

<param name="base" value="." />: This attribute tells the Flash movie how to interpret any relative paths used with ActionScript. The default value is ".", which means that Flash resolves any relative paths within ActionScript to the same directory that the Flash movie resides in. For example, if base is set to ".", the following action in ActionScript 3.0 looks for an HTML document named form.html in the same directory as the Flash movie file (.swf):

navigateToURL(new URLRequest("form.html"));

You can use dot notation with the base attribute, such as "../", or specify a fully qualified domain name, such as "http://www.myserver.com/section_1", to let the Flash movie know that all relative paths should be resolved from that starting point.

</object>: This is the closing tag for the starting <object> tag. As I show you later in this chapter, you can put other HTML tags between the last <param> tag and the closing </object> tag for non-ActiveX-enabled browsers, such as Netscape or Apple Safari. Because Internet Explorer for Windows is the primary browser that currently implements <object> tags, most browsers simply skip the <object> tag (as well as its <param> tags) and read only the tags between the last <param> and </object> tags.

<embed: This is the opening <embed> tag. Note that lines B through T are attributes of the opening <embed> tag, which is why you don't see the > character at the end of line A.

src: This stands for source, and it indicates the filename of the Flash movie. This attribute of <embed> works exactly like the movie parameter of the <object> tag.

play: This attribute behaves in the same manner as the play parameter of the <object> tag. If you omit this attribute in your HTML, the Flash Player assumes that it should automatically play the Flash movie.

loop: This attribute controls the same behavior as the loop parameter of the <object> tag. If you omit this attribute in your HTML, the Flash Player automatically loops playback of the movie's Main Timeline.

quality: This attribute controls how the Flash movie's artwork appears in the browser window. Like the equivalent quality parameter of the <object> tag, its value can be low, autolow, autohigh, high, or best.

scale: This attribute of <embed> controls how the Flash movie fits within the browser window and/or the dimensions specified by width and height (item K). Its value can be showall (default if attribute is omitted), noborder, exactfit, or noscale.

salign: This attribute controls the internal alignment of the Flash movie within the viewing area of the movie's dimensions. See the description for the salign parameter of the <object> tag for more information.

wmode: This attribute controls the opacity of the Flash movie's background color and works only with specific browser and Flash Player version combinations. See the wmode parameter description in the <object> tag for more details.

devicefont: This attribute controls the appearance of any text within a Flash movie and functions correctly only on the Windows operating system. See the description for devicefont in the <object> tag section.

bgcolor: This setting controls the Flash movie's background color. Again, this attribute behaves identically to the equivalent <param> subtag of the <object> tag. See that tag's description in the preceding section.

width and height: These attributes control the dimensions of the Flash movie as it appears on the Web page. Refer to the width and height descriptions of the <object> tag for more information.

swLiveConnect: This is one attribute that you won't find in the <object> tag. This unique tag enables Netscape's LiveConnect feature, which enables plug-ins and Java applets to communicate with JavaScript. By default, this attribute is set to false. If it is enabled (the attribute is set to true), the Web page may experience a short delay during loading. The latest versions of Netscape don't start the Java engine during a browsing session until a Web page containing a Java applet (or a Java-enabled plug-in such as the Flash Player) is loaded. Unless you use fscommand() actions in your Flash movies, it's best to omit this attribute or set its value to false.

name: This attribute works in tandem with the swLiveConnect attribute, enabling the Flash movie to be identified in JavaScript. The value given to the name attribute is the Flash movie object name that can be used within your JavaScript programming.

id: This attribute is also used for JavaScript functionality. It's uncertain whether this value is necessary if the name attribute exists, but Flash MX 2004's Flash with FSCommand HTML template (in the Publish Settings dialog box) includes both the name and id attributes. The id attribute should use the same value as the name attribute.

align: This attribute behaves exactly the same as the align parameter for the <object>. See its description in the preceding section for more information.

allowScriptAccess: This attribute controls how the Flash movie can access JavaScript from getURL() and fscommand() actions. See the description of allowScriptAccess in the <object> tag coverage earlier in this chapter.

allowFullScreen: This attribute determines the full screen capability of a Flash movie running in Flash Player 9 r28 or later. See the description of allowFullScreen in the <object> tag coverage earlier in this chapter.

flashvars: This attribute assigns variables to the Main Timeline of the Flash movie at runtime. See the description of flashvars in the <object> tag coverage earlier in this chapter.

type="application/x-shockwave-flash": This attribute tells the browser what MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension) content-type the embedded file is. Each file type (TIF, JPEG, GIF, PDF, and so on) has a unique MIME content-type header, describing what its content is. For Flash movies, the content-type is application/x-shockwave-flash. Any program (or operating system) that uses files over the Internet handles MIME content-types according to a reference chart that links each MIME content-type to its appropriate parent application or plug-in. Without this attribute, the browser may not understand what type of file the Flash movie is. As a result, it may display the broken plug-in icon when the Flash movie downloads to the browser.

base=".": This attribute tells the Flash movie how to resolve relative paths used in the movie's ActionScript code. See the description of base in the <object> tag coverage earlier in this chapter.

pluginspage: Literally "plug-in's page," this attribute tells the browser where to go to find the appropriate plug-in installer if it doesn't have the Flash plug-in already installed. This is not equivalent to a JavaScript-enabled auto installer or detection page. It simply redirects the browser to the URL of the Web page where the appropriate software can be downloaded.

</embed>: This is the closing tag for the original <embed> tag in line A. Some older or text-based browsers such as Lynx are incapable of displaying <embed> tags. You can insert alternate HTML (such as a static or animated GIF image with the <img> tag) between the <embed> </embed> tags for these browsers. Some browsers may require that you insert these alternate tags between a <noembed></noembed> set of tags within or after the <embed></embed> tags.

Create a new Flash document by choosing File

Save the new Flash document as detection_test.fla.

Add some placeholder text to the Stage by using the Text tool. Because this example is checking for Flash Player 9 r28, you can type This is Flash Player 9 r28 content.

Choose File

To keep the new version settings in a separate profile, click the Create New Profile (+) button at the top of the Publish Settings dialog box. Name the profile FP9 r28 Detection, as shown in Figure 19.3. Click OK to close the dialog box, but leave the Publish Settings dialog box open.

Click the Flash tab. In the Version menu, choose Flash Player 9. In the ActionScript version menu, choose ActionScript 3.0 if not already selected. See Figure 19.4 for a review of these settings.

Figure 19.3. The Create New Profile dialog box, showing the new profile name.

Figure 19.4. The Flash Player 9 settings in the Flash tab.

Click the HTML tab of the Publish Settings dialog box and select the Detect Flash Version check box. The two editable text fields to the right of the Version label should now be enabled. The major version of the Flash Player is fixed to the Player version you chose in the Flash tab. The first of the two editable fields represents a Minor Revision value; to date, Adobe hasn't released any minor revisions of the Flash Player, but this feature is enabled just in case Adobe does release any minor revision during the life cycle of the Flash CS5 authoring tool. The second field represents the Incremental Revision value. Since Flash Player 4, Adobe has released several incremental revisions of the Flash Player for each player cycle.

Type 28 in the second field, as shown in Figure 19.5. If you wanted to check for a different incremental version of Flash Player 9, you could enter that value instead. Click OK to close the dialog box, and go back to the HTML tab of the Publish Settings dialog box.

Figure 19.5. The Publish Settings dialog box

In the Publish Settings dialog box, click the Publish button. Flash CS5 generates all the necessary JavaScript within the published HTML document to properly detect the Flash Player version. Click OK to close the Publish Settings dialog box.

On your desktop, navigate to the folder where you saved your original .fla file. If you created the sample document in Step 1, you want to find the location of detection_test.fla. In this location, you will see the HTML file created for the detection process.

In your own Web browser, load the detection_test.htmlpage. If your browser has Flash Player 9 r28 or later, the browser should display your detection_test.swf movie. This process works because the detection_test.html page uses JavaScript to check the installed Flash Player version, if one exists. If you open the HTML document in a text editor such as Adobe Dreamweaver CS5, you'll see that lines 286–291 declare the version numbers you entered in the HTML tab of the Publish Settings dialog box. The JavaScript code compares these values to the version of the Flash Player that loaded the movie. If the Flash Player matches (or exceeds) the version requirements, the Flash content tags (<object> and <embed>) are written to the HTML page with JavaScript. Otherwise, the alternate content specified on line 330 in the JavaScript code is loaded into the browser window.

To accurately test your pages over an Internet connection, upload all the files (except the .fla file) to your Web server and load the detection_test.html document from the Web server URL to redo the test.

Open the countdown_100.fla file that you modified in the previous section. Select frame 1 of the actions layer, and open the Actions panel (F9/Option+F9). Add the code shown in Listing 19.4 after the first import statement but before the changeBgColor function declaration. Do not type the

The import flash.display.LoaderInfo; statement makes ready the LoaderInfo class necessary for accessing the Flash movie's percent-loaded information. The import flash.sysem.Security; statement makes available the Security class that defines which Web domain can access content with the Flash movie (.swf file).

The Security.allowDomain("*"); action allows JavaScript to access the Flash movie's methods and properties. Use the "*" value only when testing the file locally. If you intend to upload a live example to your Web server, specify the Web server's domain name.

The next block of code uses an if statement to check whether the ExternalInterface capabilities are available in the current host environment, such as a Web browser. If ExternalInterface is available, an ActionScript function named getPercentLoaded is exposed to JavaScript with the ExternalInterface.addCallback() method. This method takes two arguments: the name you want to use in JavaScript to call the Flash function ("getPercentLoaded", although you could specify a different name here to use in JavaScript if you preferred), and the Flash function name that is invoked when JavaScript calls the function named as the first argument (getPercentLoaded). The catch statements are invoked only if an error is encountered when the Flash movie tries to access JavaScript with the addCallBack() method. The throw new Error() actions display an error dialog at runtime to alert the user to an error encountered during playback.

The function getPercentLoaded() does not use any arguments. The purpose of the getPercentLoaded() function is to return the percent loaded of the Flash movie file (.swf).

Save your Flash document as countdown_complete.fla, and publish your Flash movie.

In a text editor such as Adobe Dreamweaver, Notepad, or TextEdit, open the countdown_swfobject_100.htmldocument from the previous section. Immediately resave this document as countdown_swfobject.html.

Add the following HTML after the <object>and <embed>tags:

<form method="post" action="" name="flashPercent"  

  style="display:show">
 <input type="text" name="labelField" size="5" 

 style="display:show" />
</form>

The code in Step 4 uses two name attributes so that JavaScript can recognize them. Also, the DHTML style attribute assigns a display:show value to both the <form> and <input> tags.

Add the JavaScript code shown in Listing 19.5 to your HTML document after the changeBgColor()function. The following percentLoaded function tells the browser to update the <form> text field with the percent of the Flash movie currently loaded. When the value is greater than or equal to 100, then the text field reads 100 percent and disappears after two seconds. This code also declares a thisMovie() function, which returns a reference to the Flash object in the <object> tag. The thisMovie() function is used in the percentLoaded() function to call the Flash movie's getPercentLoaded() function you wrote in Step 1 of this section, to retrieve the loaded percent of the Flash movie. After the percentLoaded() function is declared in JavaScript, you use the setInterval() function in JavaScript to continuously invoke the percentLoaded() function, every 100 milliseconds. This interval is cleared when the Flash movie is fully loaded. (The

Save the HTML document and load it into a browser. If you run into errors, check your JavaScript syntax carefully. A misplaced ; or } can set off the entire script. Also, the function names specified in the Flash ActionScript code and the JavaScript code are case-sensitive and must be exactly the same. If you continue to run into errors, compare your document to the countdown_swfobject.html document on this book's CD-ROM. I also recommend that you test the preloading functionality from a remote Web server. If you test the file locally, the Flash Player may throw a security error dialog box.