Using Flash Objects (SWF) in Compiled Publications

Applies to HTML Viewer, IE Browser publications

Adobe Flash® is a file format used for rich Web content over the Internet using Adobe® Flash Player. IE Browser and HTML Viewer publications can display Flash content (in SWF format) provided that the Adobe® Flash Player is installed.

Some Flash files may require external files (like images, XML files...) in order to work:

IE publications can detect which additional files may be required by your Flash movies automatically provided that their extension is available in the Special Extension list. For instance, if you have a Flash movie that loads external JPEG files, you need to check that the .JPG extension is in the Special Extension list. Please keep in mind that all files whose extension is in that list are always extracted to the hard disk, so any advanced user can copy them.

If you do not want to use the Special Extension list way (for instance you want to avoid all of your JPG files from being unpacked to the hard disk), you can also use the Dependencies feature, as shown in the example below.

For HTML Viewer publications, you must use the Dependencies feature. See the dedicated topic in the Main Demonstration (example + screencast tutorial).

Working Example in IE publications

This Flash movie (carousel3.swf) loads its data from a XML file called "icons.xml". The XML extension is by default in the Special Extension list so the Flash movie is able to load the XML file without any problem. However, this XML file contains references to additional PNG files (icon1.png, icon2.png, icon3.png and icon4.png). The PNG extension is not in the Special Extension list; therefore these iconN.png files won't be extracted and the Flash movie will fail. Two solutions: you can add ".PNG" to the Special Extension list (not recommended because this would cause any PNG file of your publication to be unpacked to the hard disk) or you can use Dependencies.

For this example, we selected this page in the File Manager and in the File Properties window, we added the four iconN.png files as dependencies of the page:

When the page is loaded, the required iconN.png files are made available and the Flash movie can load them too.

HTML syntax for the Flash movie:

Flash movie sample by Lee Brimelow from http://www.gotoandlearn.com

Working Examples in HTML Viewer publications

See the dedicated topic in the Main Demonstration.

See also Special Extension list and Dependencies.