A reader emailed with a problem he’s having with the ExternalInterface. It seems that his code works fine when the page is hosted on a server but doesn’t work sometimes when accessed directly on the PC. ( Meaning opening the file locally in the browser with a C://path/filename. )

I seem to recall some issues that I had in the past but I haven’t worked with the ExternalInterface in over a year.

The error he gets is: Object or property is not supported.

The reader who asked the question said that he found no mention online nor in the documentation about this. Anyone out there know what’s the what?

Flash and XML go together like peanut butter and jelly. If your working on a project where there is data inside of Flash that is likely to change then XML is the way to go. That way you, or anyone with a text editor, can update an XML file – essentially a text file – and change things inside your Flash app.

The downside to using XML is that the data you get back can be confusing as hell to navigate through. I had to deal with it enough that I finally created a class – PXP2 – that takes care of all the mundane aspects of using XML so that you can get right to work and skip a lot of code and confusion.

In this tutorial I’ll do a simple example of how I would create a site navigation using XML.

[ Download FLV ] [ Download sample files ]

A few notes: there is no AS3 version PXP2 of this because AS3 has the E4x class which is like PXP2 on steroids. I’ll do a tutorial on how to use E4x in a few weeks.

PXP2 stands for: Polygeek Xml Parsing Project = PXPP = PXP2

I have to look this up all the time because I can never remember the syntax for using FlashVars in the various ways one embeds a SWF in an HTML file.

FlashVars is a way to pass data from the HTML containing page. You can read more about it here.

[ download example using AC_RunActiveContent and object/embed tags ]

For the <object><embed> tags

The <object> tag will run in IE. Add this param along with the others:

<param name=”FlashVars” value=”var1=One&var2=Two” />

The <embed> tag will run in Netscape/FireFox browsers. Simply place the following attribute anywhere inside the <embed> tag:

FlashVars="var1=One&var2=Two"

Using the Flash IDE’s Javascript ( AC_RunActiveContent.js )

I add the FlashVars parameter to the end of the AC_FL_RunContent function like so:
‘salign’, ”, ‘flashvars’,'var1=One&var2=Two’); //end AC code

Don’t forget to add a comma after the – ‘salign’, ”, - line. If you don’t you’ll get a Javascript error and nothing works. I’ve only made that mistake a few dozen times.

And don’t forget, you have to edit the <object><embed> tags contained in the <noscript> block manually.

Using swfobject

Check out the examples page at blog.deconcept.com here.

It’s pretty simple:

<script type=”text/javascript”>
var so = new SWFObject(“movie.swf”, “mymovie”, “400″, “200″, “8″, “#336699″);
so.addVariable(“var1″, “One”);
so.addVariable(“var2″, “Two”);
so.write(“flashcontent”);
</script>

Using Kimili Flash Embed WordPress plugin

Use the fvars attribute: ( Note: Brackets around Kimili code removed because of WordPress. )

kml_flashembed movie="/flash/471_FlashVars.swf"height="100" width="200" fvars="var1=One&var2=Two"

This video tutorial begins where the first one left off. Here you’ll learn to place your class files inside a unique name space within your global class path.

If you’ve ever downloaded someone else’s class files and couldn’t get them to work this might help.

[ download FLV ]

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Start building web applications with Adobe Flex Builder 2

Notes:

• An import statement adds that class to your SWF when it’s compiled and adds on to the file size of your SWF. If you’re importing a class but not using it then you’ll bloat your SWF filesize unnecessarily. This happens from time to time when you edit your code and remove a call to a class and forget to remove the import statement.

Lee Brimelow at gotoAndLearn.com did a video tutorial covering the use of custom classes. I’d suggest watching that if you still have any questions.

If you’re using class files ( .as ) you need to know where to put them. It can be a little confusing because they can go in more than one place. In the video below I’ll cover the basics of where you can put these files and make them work.

[ download FLV ]

Related videos: Class files with name spaces and the import statement

Adobe affiliate links help support video tutorials here at polyGeek.com

Start building web applications with Adobe Flex Builder 2

Lee Brimelow at gotoAndLearn.com did a video tutorial covering the use of custom classes. I’d suggest watching that if you still have any questions.