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December 6, 2006
Answered

URL link issue

  • December 6, 2006
  • 15 replies
  • 1146 views

Hi

I am trying to create a link in my project to one of our company intranet pages. I am using a click box and the URL - it works fine in the Preview from Slide or next 5 slides, but when I Preview in Web Browser it doesn't connect. Any suggestions as to what might be the cause?

Thanks
Alex
    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer Chovansky
    Hi folks,

    I found this thread because we're having the same problem of being able to view an .exe file of our project but not the .htm when trying to access an Internet URL from our project.

    After reading about the security issue concept, I tried ours again and fell upon a Flash message to the effect that "Flash Player has stopped a potentially unsafe operation..." indicating that our "local application was trying to communicate with an Internet-enabled location" and telling me to click on the Settings button included with the text. This in turn led me to the page http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/ and from there to the Global Security settings Panel.

    On that page, it displays your own Adobe Flash Player Settings Manager and advises you of what to do to establish a valid development environment to properly test your results (seems the links WOULD work if published to the Web, but who wants to just take that on faith ;o). We added our development folder path to the Always Allow group and ... voila! ... the .htm files are now properly linking to the URLs we specified.

    Thanks so much for the "security settings" heads up!

    Sure hope this helps you too,

    Gail

    15 replies

    Inspiring
    December 19, 2006
    You're welcome, Alex :O)

    For the record, we made the same mistake first time around with the Flash security settings ... specified our destination path instead of our source. The good part is that it will accept a folder level, not just a file level, so that you only have to go through the process once if you keep all your development within the same folder.

    BIG relief around here too!

    Gail
    Captiv8r
    Legend
    December 19, 2006
    Hi Alex

    Interesting that the same dialog I steered you to back on 12/12 works for you today but it fails back on 12/12 when I suggested you use it. Makes me wonder if the Adobe site was down or something on 12/12.

    Anyway, I'm glad you managed to get it sorted! Rick
    ChovanskyCorrect answer
    Inspiring
    December 19, 2006
    Hi folks,

    I found this thread because we're having the same problem of being able to view an .exe file of our project but not the .htm when trying to access an Internet URL from our project.

    After reading about the security issue concept, I tried ours again and fell upon a Flash message to the effect that "Flash Player has stopped a potentially unsafe operation..." indicating that our "local application was trying to communicate with an Internet-enabled location" and telling me to click on the Settings button included with the text. This in turn led me to the page http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/ and from there to the Global Security settings Panel.

    On that page, it displays your own Adobe Flash Player Settings Manager and advises you of what to do to establish a valid development environment to properly test your results (seems the links WOULD work if published to the Web, but who wants to just take that on faith ;o). We added our development folder path to the Always Allow group and ... voila! ... the .htm files are now properly linking to the URLs we specified.

    Thanks so much for the "security settings" heads up!

    Sure hope this helps you too,

    Gail
    December 19, 2006

    You are officially my favourite person right now!

    It has worked! Yay. Thank you so much. I had played with the Flash Security settings before but I was allowing only a link to the page I wanted it to go to rather than an entire drive.

    Yay Yay Yay

    Thank you!

    Alex
    December 18, 2006
    Hi suemcc49

    Did you try all of the tips above - I know I didn't have much luck but it was useful going through all the possibilities as other things came up that we tried along the way.

    Since my llast week I have had our IT person look into the Hosts info posted by Rick but unfortunately that hasn't solved it either. We are testing a few more options at the moment.

    Let me know how you get on - I would love a solution!

    Alex
    Participating Frequently
    December 14, 2006
    I am having the same issue. I specify a URL, it works in Captivate preview but not when published. Can anyone help?
    December 12, 2006
    Ok.

    This is the first URL I am trying to use:

    http://wlgweb/Corporat/HumanResources/Staff%20Conduct/EmailInternetUsagePolicy.pdf

    And this is the second:

    http://cmsqa.contact-energy.co.nz/n1775.html

    I have selected both to open in the Current window and they are on separate slides (i don't know if that makes a difference).

    Thank you for investigating!
    Alex :)


    Captiv8r
    Legend
    December 12, 2006
    Hi Alex

    Hmmm, before investigating too deeply, I'm seeing some familiarity here. For starters, the first link is to a .PDF. It's been my experience that links to .PDF and Word .DOC files is "iffy" at best. If you truly copied and pasted the links, I'd first try removing the %20 from that first link. That's something the browser normally inserts for a space. So instead of:

    http://wlgweb/Corporat/HumanResources/Staff%20Conduct/EmailInternetUsagePolicy.pdf

    Change it to read:

    http://wlgweb/Corporat/HumanResources/Staff Conduct/EmailInternetUsagePolicy.pdf

    This may help and it may just be twisting in the wind. But I'd try that first. I've often seen linking issues arise from that silly %20. If possible, try to avoid that. I'm guessing here that it may not be possible to control in your case as someone else may be in control of those names. I've personally always opted to either use a mix of upper/lower case names ( StaffConduct ) or substitution of an underscore where spaces would normally occur ( Staff_Conduct ).

    Other wierdness I've seen when linking to .PDF content:

    * I personally had a different PDF reader (Foxit) installed as my default. When Foxit was my default reader, PDF links refused to open.
    * I think this one is IE specific, but I've also seen it where if I have a .PDF in the same folder and open that way, even though the address is totally correct, the first time through, the link fails. With the totally correct address showing in the address bar. I simply refresh the page and bingo, the PDF shows! Go figure. I really don't believe that this one is related to Captivate and the way it calls the links. My gut tells me it's an IE thing. But I have nothing to back me up on this.

    I'm not sure what to say or suggest for the second link. I tested it myself and it doesn't work, which tells me that either the link is simply incorrect, or possibly it's located on an intranet site.

    Sincerely... Rick
    December 13, 2006
    Hello again,

    Have tried you suggestions - unfortunately they have not worked either.

    Both URLs are on our company intranet - but I've tried linking to an external site also (google) and it hasn't worked either.

    I'm not sure what 'IE' is but we have Adobe Acrobat as our default (and only I believe) reader.

    I'm making you work for it!

    Alex
    December 12, 2006
    Hi Rick

    We have version 9, 0, 16, 0 installed.

    Have just added file location to Flash Settings Manager - but still no response when published. The file is on our intranet so I put the intranet address and the file location address in the Settings Manager.

    Any more ideas?

    Thanks
    Alex :)
    Captiv8r
    Legend
    December 12, 2006
    Hi again Alex

    I was confused at first, as in a different post that tykebrahe had made about the same issue, I had asked for exactly how the link was being created as well as exactly what the link properties read. I wondered why you failed to provide that info. Duh

    So you use the Click box and the Open URL or file action. I see you posted that initially. Can you simply edit that click box and copy what is inside the field where you are specifying the URL and paste it here for us to examine? Maybe from that we can offer suggestions. Or it may not do anything but deepen the mystery. But we would sure like to help you sort it if we can. I do know how frustrating it can be.

    Cheers... Rick
    December 12, 2006
    Thanks for that tykebrahe.

    I was beginning to think I was a going a bit nutty. It's a shame as it's a really as it's good feature and it cuts down on design time just being able to link the person and let them explore themselves. I hope someone comes up with a work around of some sort.

    Thanks again
    Alex :)
    Captiv8r
    Legend
    December 12, 2006
    Hi Alex and tykebrahe

    If you click the following link, what do you see as the version listed for your Flash player?

    Click here to determine your Flash version

    If you are running these files locally, maybe you need to add the location to the Flash Settings Manager?

    Click here to visit the Settings Manager page.

    Cheers... Rick
    Participating Frequently
    December 12, 2006
    Hi AlexR-G,
    You are not alone with the problem you face. It seems to work when publish to exe, but not flash. I do not now if that is a IT security problem or not (I can paste the URL in my webbrowser and it works, but it does not work within a flash published captivate movie)
    December 7, 2006
    I thought you had nailed it with that one!

    But no, it's not automatically entering a prefix.

    I am absolutely stumped - I'm not sure our IT can help much further either - I'm one of only 2 in our company who uses Captivate and both of us are relatively new to the product. I will re-design to remove the link component for now but if you can think of anything else would be grateful for ideas. I might visit the IT big wigs at head office and see if they can shed some light!

    Thanks so much for your help!
    Alex
    CatBandit
    Inspiring
    December 7, 2006
    I meant the Windows Explorer browse that is built into Captivate's click-box dialog (and other places). What I was getting to was the question of the link itself. Some link prefixes are "assumed" within a product and I wondered if that could be the case here. For instance, if you are entering the whole address ....

    http://www.nodomain.com

    and Captivate is automatically entering a prefix for you, it might end up being:

    http://http://www.nodomain.com

    ?