Posts Tagged “flash”

I often get emails telling me that my training for putting FLV files into Flash doesn’t work as it should once the files are on the web. In other words, people can insert a video into Flash just fine using File > Import > Import Video, and all is well when testing on a computer, but when the files are uploaded to a web server, everything breaks. A few days ago, I was teaching a Flash class and experienced the problem myself after moving my SWF and FLV files into another folder. As soon as I moved them, everything stopped working! What the crap!?

Here’s the problem- when you set the video path for the FLV playback component in Flash on a Mac (only a Mac, not a PC), Flash does not create a relative URL. Instead, Flash tells the FLV Playback component to look for the file in Users/username/somefolder/someotherfolderthatholdsyourFLVfile/flvfile.flv. So, when you move the FLV, the code breaks because Flash is looking in that absolute location (kinda dopey, huh?). Try as you might, it is literally impossible in Flash on a Mac to set a relative path like flvfile.flv for the source of the FLV Playback component. If you type it in the component inspector manually, Flash finds the file and changes it to an absolute path. Quite annoying indeed.

Now the solution- you have to do it with code. It’s really simple code though, so it’s not a huge pain.

1. Give the FLV Playback component and instance name (first you have to select it, and then click in the instance name field in the Properties panel).
2. Add the code instanceName.source = “flvfile.flv”; (of course, you have to replace instanceName with the actual instance name of your FLV Playback component, and flvfile.flv with the actual name of your movie file).
3. Test the movie to create the SWF file that has the relative path.
4. Upload the files, and watch everything work in all its majestical majesty.

That’s it!

My most recent title on Lynda.com is about creating search engine friendly sites. In the title, I demonstrate how to optimize sites that contain heavy amounts of Flash content. I’ve written about Flash SEO here, as well as on InsideRIA, and also wrote a book called Search Engine Optimization for Flash (for those of you who want detailed info on Flash SEO).

One issue in my Lynda title is that the examples worked in Safari and not FireFox (I fixed that by the way, and the new files/movies should be on the Lynda site now, or very soon). The problem actually had nothing to do with Flash- it was a FireFox issue regarding the way the browser handles CSS percentages. Because of the issue, FireFox was not rendering the Flash content or the alternate content I set up. Not cool.

Here’s the solution- FireFox needs to have percentages setup for every parent element of the element that is to use CSS percentages. So if <div id=”flashContent”> is inside of <div id=”someOtherDiv”>, and you want the flashContent div to take up 100% of the browser window, you have to set someOtherDiv to be 100% as well, along with the element(s) that div is in (maybe just the body tag, for example), and the html tag. Here’s an example of the CSS rule you’d need to use:

html,body,div#someOtherDiv,div#flashContent {
width:100%;
height:100%;
}

So remember, when you’re using percentages for an element in CSS, always also use percentages for each of that elements parents, all the way up through the html tag.

In response to Brian’s request, here are my top three tips for boosting your Flash based site’s ranking in search engine results.

First, add a page title to your HTML file. When you publish HTML from Flash, you get an HTML page to house your SWF file, and the page title is generated for you. The problem is that many people don’t take the time to change it, and use file names like project_1_new.fla, so the title for the page ends up being project_1_new. Not very descriptive, seeing as a page’s title is your biggest chance for impact when your site shows up in a search. If you’re new to Search Engine Optimization (SEO), then you may think of page titles as those things at the top of your browser window that don’t matter too much:

But check out the significance of page titles in a web search:

To add a page title to your page, open up your HTML page (created from Flash, or whatever app you use) in a text editor (Dreamweaver, Notepad, TextEdit), and type a descriptive title for your page in the title tag. It looks like <title></title>. So your descriptive title tag should look something like <title>This is the new, improved, descriptive title tag</title>. Your page’s title should accurately describe the content of your page, and should contain keywords that are relative to that page in your site. In other words, your goal is to write a concise description of the page’s content that contains keywords people are likely to search for to find sites like yours.

Read the rest of this entry »

Today is the last day to enter to win a copy of Todd’s book Search Engine Optimization for Flash. Tomorrow, we’ll announce the winner, and that person will be filled with unspeakable joy, beyond the likes any human has heretofore seen…probably.

I’m really excited about my new book- Search Engine Optimization for Flash. The book shows how to optimize Flash based websites to rank higher in search engine results. As an effort to promote this book, we’re giving away a free copy through this site.

All you have to do to win a copy of the book is make a comment on this post, following these rules:

• One comment per person, per day
• Comment must contain a Flash related question that can be answered via a blog post (e.g. How do you create HTML links in Flash?)
• Comment must be made on this post before 12:00am Pacific Time Wednesday, April 15

The winner will be chosen based on the quality of the Flash question asked (chosen by me- i.e. my favorite question wins), and will receive one copy of Search Engine Optimization for Flash, as well as the answer to the question in the form of a blog post on this site. Have fun!

At the time of the writing of my book on developing Flash Games for the Wii, the only way to connect Flash and the Wii console (not just the controller) was to develop Flash Player 7 games and browse to them via the Wii’s Internet Channel. While these games could be fun and addictive, like Missile Command 3D, Flash support on the Internet Channel is limited (i.e. Flash Player 7, ActionScript 2.0, and weak Flash Player performance).

Recently, Nintendo has made it possible to develop actual Wii console games using all Flash. While an official announcement hasn’t come yet, this could mean a lot to developers who make excellent Flash web games and want to create games for a home console. Of course, Wii game development will likely only be an option for those developers approved by Nintendo. Even so, this gives us Flash developers the potential to create games on a whole new platform that’s highly popular and has a unique control scheme.

As a game loving guy, I admit I’ve had my fair share of fantasies about developing a console game. It’s amazing to see that it’s now possible using Flash.

Here’s where you can ask questions about the book Nintendo Wii Flash Game Creator’s Guide by Todd. We’ll answer the questions here for everyone. You can ask any question by making a comment at the bottom of this post. Look past the break for all the questions and answers.

Read the rest of this entry »