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B
Buena Fortuna
Known Participant
January 14, 2008
Question

Posting SWF files to web...*new to forum*

  • January 14, 2008
  • 5 replies
  • 891 views
Ok. I'm having a little trouble and was hoping to get some basic information. I'm using Adobe Captivate 2 and wish to add the SWF's(or whichever way is best) it creates to a website. What is the best way to do this? I want the user to be able to click a link and then have the SWF file pop-up and do it's presentation.

Can someone describe this process pls ?

thanks so much
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5 replies

J
jbradley88
Participating Frequently
January 17, 2008
It could be an issue with the spaces in the Captivate filenames. Some web servers hate that.

Try eliminating all spaces in the Project Title field when publishing (replacing spaces with underscores is a typical approach). The Project Title field should actually be called the Publish As field.

Also, it's very odd that it got to 32% and then stopped... I'm wondering if you're not having a server issue or possibly a firewall conflict of some kind. Do other Flash movies/Captivate projects load OK from your server?
B
Buena FortunaAuthor
Known Participant
January 22, 2008
Sorry for the late response. The wife and I just returned from San Francisco for the weekend.

Ok. It appears you're correct in your assessment of the filename issue. After creating a new swf w/o any spacing in the filename it worked great. It's odd that it would come down to something as simple as that. Also, this is our first captivate movie we have published to our server. Our usage of this program is to build tutorials for students and parents to assist in navigating our website. So, problem solved. Though, I do have one other question.

The tutorials I'm creating will be used on a university website. Are there any security issues I need to be aware of and will publishing a swf in flash 6 (I used that option within captivate when saving file) cause any problems?

thanks again for the help....
J
jbradley88
Participating Frequently
January 22, 2008
Somebody else may have more info to share, but I'm not aware of any security issues when publishing to Flash Player 6. Captivate-generated files don't do anything "unsafe" so you should be good.
J
jbradley88
Participating Frequently
January 17, 2008
Can you view the published How To files if you enter the URL directly ( http://ourwebsite/converting/howtofilename.htm)? If so, the problem is probably with the link from the Dreamweaver page.

Also, feel free to post the source code of the page you get when clicking the Dreamweaver-generated link... there may be something we can spot from the code.
B
Buena FortunaAuthor
Known Participant
January 17, 2008
Thanks again for your help. I'm going to attach the code to this message, but also I did try your tip on entering the URL directly. It got farther this time (it even loaded the toolbar at bottom to rewind, play, etc), but it locked up at 32%.

J
jbradley88
Participating Frequently
January 17, 2008
"Movie not loaded" would seem to indicate that either movie is not present in the correct directory on the server or the link to the file is wrong in the HTML code. Then again, it may be something entirely different.

Perhaps if you could explain exactly what you're trying to accomplish and provide a link to an example of how you're trying to do that, there might be more we can offer.
B
Buena FortunaAuthor
Known Participant
January 17, 2008
Thanks for the help. Ok here are the steps I followed to get where I'm at now.

1) Create a "How to" with Captivate 2.
2) Used the Publish option to save Flash (SWF) w/export HTML option checked.
3) The 4 files that were generated were added to the same directory on our server.
4) Link posted on our internal webpage for test as http://ourwebsite/converting files to pdf.htm. (I created a tutorial on how to convert files to PDF)

That was basically it other then the fact that the person adding it to our website used Dreamweaver. When you click on the link on our site it acts like it's try to load, but says "Movie not loaded". It seems like it either can't find the file or something is amiss in the code itself. I did view the source and I can post it if you think it will help. I used the "View Source" option once the webpage opened.

thanks
J
jbradley88
Participating Frequently
January 16, 2008
The HTM page published by Captivate along with the movie will automatically prompt the user to install the Flash Player if they don't already have it or don't have a recent enough version. There's no prior warning that this will happen, though.

If you want to show the user a message prior to launching the training, your best best is to do that from a separate HTM page that then links to the Captivate-generated page.
B
Buena FortunaAuthor
Known Participant
January 16, 2008
Thanks for the advice. We must be doing something wrong, because when you click on the link it will bump you to a new page, but won't load the movie. If you right click, it says "Movie not loaded". The person adding this is using Dreamweaver to add it if that makes a difference.

Captiv8r
Captiv8r
Legend
January 15, 2008
Hi there

When you publish from Captivate, you typically end up with four files, sometimes more. What you end up with depends on your settings in effect at the time you published.

Normally the following four files are involved:

* MainMovie.SWF (Actual name is what you named your output)
* MainMovie_skin.SWF
* MainMovie.HTM
* standard.js

If all you want to do is provide a link that your end user will click to watch the Captivate, you push these files to a server, then provide a link to your user that points to the HTML file (MainMovie.HTM).

If you wish to place the contents of the Captivate movie within an existing Web Page, you will need to ensure the code is inserted. One way to do this is to examine the HTM page that Captivate provides, then copy that and paste into the page. You would also need to tweak the page so it either doesn't need the standard.js file, or so it correctly references the standard.js file.

Hopefully this helps a smidge... Rick
B
Buena FortunaAuthor
Known Participant
January 15, 2008
Thanks for the reply and to recap. I guess this is the process I need to follow.

Step 1: Determine if movie will be a clickable link (that's then loaded) or embedded in a webpage (additional code needed).

Note: I would just be providing a link the user clicks to run the movie.

Step 2: Add the four files to server (all in same directory) and point link on webpage to htm location. (I.E. C:\Adobe\MainMovie.htm)


I do have one interesting question though. This method would require the user to already have flash player installed right? What if I want to force user or at least notify them they need to d/l flash to view the movie? How would I go about doing that?
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