Opening new page to a Specific frame

Question

I am still learning Action Script but I have a problem with
writing the full script for combing navigate to new URL and
gotoAndPlay. More specifically what I want to do is use a button
which when clicked will open a new page and then start playing my
Flash movie at a certain frame on the Timeline. I have used buttons
to navigate to a new URL and used the gotoAndPlay ( ) ; command to
play a certain frame, both have been successful but when I combine
the two I run into trouble. What happens is the new page loads
correctly and goes to the specific frame but then opens the browser
in a new window with the movie playing from the beginning. The
correct sequence within the correct Webpage is playing but only if
I close the current page, in other words what I am trying to
achieve is running but in the background.

I have attached some of the code I have tried if that helps.
Many Thanks.

1485 · Accepted Answer

How extensive are the corresponding text changes on the HTML page? How many HTML pages are there? The reason I am asking is that if HTML content is not big - your best bet may be to load all the HTML content at once and hide/unhide parts of it based on the commands that come from Flash.

But if you are sticking to your guns:

Your use case, as you described it, is:
1. user clicks a button on a column
2. the column clicked moves across the movie
3. the movie starts to play a different section
4. the text on the web page changes to match the new movie sequence.

There is a problem here - No 4 requires browser reloading. I believe user experience will not be all that good because of the visual break (new html page loading) after all the animation sequence after the click occurs. Perhaps a better experience can be:

click --> load appropriate page --> perform animation sequence.

As for the variables that you add to the request, conceptually it is not different from appending url variables to the url string:

You can do it this way:

var url:String = "www.domain.com/mypage.html?myVariable1=something&myVariable2=somethingElse";

Or you can do it this way:
ar url:String = "www.domain.com/mypage.html";
var variables:URLVariables = new URLVariables();
variables.myVariable1 = "something";
variables.myVariable2 = "somethingElse";
var request:URLRequest = new URLRequest(url);
request.data = variables;

I hope you see the similarity. The result is the same - Flash sends request with the variables.
You may perceive the second way as more cumbersome but there are several advantages of doing it this way. One of the most important is that Flash automatically makes variables values url formatted which is critical when you send strings with special characters. In addition, when you send many variables - it is much more manageable than keeping track of the variable and making assignments in one-line url string.

How you deal with it further depends on how good you are with HTML and JavaScript OR server side processing.

Say you need to start your Flash movie from a certain frame (say No 50). You may want to:
1. Load HTML page with a url that contains a frame number: variables.startframe = 50;
2. You need to read this variable with JavaScript and write an appropriate embed tag. There are several ways to do that. Read about FlashVars. It could be (in the embed tag): src="myMovie.swf?startframe=50" where 50 comes from browser location string.
3. Inside Flash you will utilize LoaderInfo.parameters method to extract the value of the variable startframe.
4. Write code that will perform and animation based on this variable/parameter.

I guess a question is "How good are you at HTML and JavaScript?"

Very Grateful for your help and comments. You are quite correct that the sequence needs to be addressed therefore what I have done is button click, load new URL, perform animation and then play the movie sequence. Using "_self" meant that the build up of browser windows was eliminated plus the sequence you suggested means that the momentary pause is only evident at the time the button is clicked.

What all this means is that the user interaction works in line with my objectives. The simplest way of achieving a similar result would have been to load the complete text and then hide and unhide appropriate parts of the page as you suggested but I have a feeling that this method would only hold good for the time being as I expect the pages/content to grow in size.

The main thing is problem solved, thanks to you.

Andrei1-bKoviI · Answer

There is no getURL in AS3 (unless you write this method yourself). In order for Flash to move to a particular frame from the start you need to indicate to the player where it needs to go. This can be accomplished by writing JS function that will embed Flash with particular FlashVar (say, frame number) which, in turn, will be read by flash code and do whatever you need.

What is 1961 in getURL? Second parameter in AS2 getURL is a target window.

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded