Firefox Issues

Hi,

Perhaps someone can offer me advise on this. I decided to try to add sound to my website. I did this a year ago, and had no problems. I made a flash box player, which could stream navigation sounds, and a theme mp3, at the same time, and controlled with the flash liveconnect setvariable command from javascript. All real simple. This player was 200px x 50px.

I copied this player onto my bazaar website, and simplified it, but ran into problems with Firefox. I wanted a little musical note, 12px x 18px. And this note would glow when navigation was accessed. It could also be clicked on to stop (annoying) background theme music. And i needed to create a cookie with a value for the sound pause, so that it would be turned off for all the pages on the site.

This would be easy, if i could get the AS2.0 command, getURL("javascript:name_of_function(args)"). I actually got it working with my last flash player, but again endlessly, i cant get it to work.

So the button, controlling theme music pause, needed to be in html /css / javascript so that i could call my create cookie function. And i removed the button in the flash player.

It seems, Firefox, has issues with Flash set to Transparent mode. If i set it to opaque or window, the z indexed html/css button is always under the flash. Making it impossible to access. And firefox doesnt like or animate flash objects under 50px x 50px , by elimination. I finally increased my flash player, to 200px x 200px, with a 12px x 18px musical note on it, on a transparent background. This fixes the Firefox issue. I tested on Opera and google Chrome, and thay dont have any issues. But i dont really like doing this.

It would be a lot simplier, to have the button on my flash player, in flash, and set the cookie from flash. I research the external interface commands, but still cant get any javascript functions to fun from flash. I previously got them to run, but just cant work out what ive done different. Got a solution but after research firefox has a lot of flash bugs, and they hope the next version of flash will cater for them.

I think i give up on this one for the time being.

(basically the issue is with Transparent Flash files under 50px x 50px in Firefox. If i use window or opaque modes, i cant seem to css a way out. The invisible anchor layer button over the top seems to always be underneath. I know cookies are possible in flash, but they are different, and dont appear on ur pc, unless search by a special flash application. I know its possible to call javascript functions to set a cookie, but cant get them to work either. Transparent images use more memory, and i think this is the firefox issue)

Just read up a bit on 'basic' flash usage.

To layer a css button over the top of a flash file, the flash file must be encoded as transparent. If its transparent it uses more memory, and currently firefox wont animate flash objects that are too small, when transparent. The only way around this is to make extra size on the flash file, tricking firefox into allocating more memory.

Flash is a big topic. Ipod and Ipads still refuze to run flash applications. Infact Apple forces any application to be approved by apple.

Another firefox issue, is sound. It seems it doesnt like streaming navigation sounds under 96 kbps. Internet Explorer runs fine on 56 kpbs. Noticed the problem a couple of years ago, and it still hasnt been fixed. Yet, browsers like google chrome and opera, have no problems at all. It may adhere to standards well, but there are issues when running flash. I mean, it does run 56 kpbs sound, but not in 'high responce' situations like navigation. The actual issue may be just memory allocation. Currently firefox refuzes to change for flash, and flash refuzes to change for firefox.

Sorry, this is a flash issue.

Javascript can controll flash objects, with the tell target set of commands, and another set of commands like object.play(), object.stop(), Object.gotoFrame(Num), Object.isloaded, etc,..and Object.setvariable.

For some reason, the tell target commands produce an error. Pitty, cause u can access animations inside your main timeline.

The object.setvariable, needs to be running in a server environment, the others don't. My bazaar flash sound player, is controlled by setvariable, so only worked on a server. I then made a 2nd one, very simple, had no music on frame one, music on frame 2, animation for nav sounds on frame 3, and no animation on on frame 4. I rewrote my javascript for the new commands, but i just cant get javascript to jump around frames like it says it does. I wrote gotoFrame(2), and it was jumping to frame 3. If i repeated gotoFrame(2), again, it would then move to frame 4.

Its a pitty, i almost got my sound to work fully in a non server environment. Flash loadvars seems to work better than javascript object.isloaded. At least setvariable always works.

Found a note on the Adobe website, when using bitmaps. They recommend a minimum flash dimension of 80px x 80px. Although in the problem above, im not actually using bitmaps. I think the 50px x 50px minimum, is talking about when controlling flash animations from javascript.

Im quite surprized with firefox. It seems it handles intervals and timeouts better than Internet Explorer. With an example mouse trail funcion, on Internet Explorer, if i turn just a single interval on, with a single trail, and set it to 10, everytime it comes on, any flash areas, freeze. On firefox, it doesnt have a problem with a setting of 10.

If i set the mouse trail interval to 50, Internet Explorer can run the javascript and flash content, at the same time, and not freeze the flash. However, now firefox freezes the flash content every time the interval comes on.

Perhaps there is a balance between 10 ( for ff) , and 50 (for ie), although i doubt it would be a linear variation.

Also, i discovered that a single call to check the scroll dimension / position, slows down intervals by a minimum of 50%. These calls need to be on a listener, or a slow timeout/interval of perhaps a 1/4 second.

Regards

Craig