FLASH: inconsistency in loading variables

[Anders Ramsay]

There have been a range of mailings re. issues surrounding loading 

variables from an external source on this list, but I didn't see 

anything that could solve  the problem I currently am the having:


BACKGROUND

I am using a flash movie for global site navigation.  The site 

divides into 12 major sections, and the global navigation menu should 

reflect which section the user is in by highlighting that part of the 

menu.  Since I only want to use one movie for all 12 sections (since 

the browser will cache it after the first time it is loaded), I am 

using an external variable to set the state of the movie depending on 

which page it is loaded into.



THE PROBLEM

While this works flawlessly when I test it locally, it works only 

about 70% of the time when I test it over the web.



HOW I AM LOADING THE EXTERNAL VARIABLE

I have a text file in the same directory as the given html file.  In 

the second frame of the movie, I use the Load Movie action set to 

'Load variables into location' with target set to a movie clip I use 

for variables and subroutines (this movie clip resides on all frames 

in the top level movie).  Then, two frames later, I tell the top 

level movie to go to the frame label of the variable in that 

directory, e.g.  if the file says 'default=home' my script would say 

'go to location(default)'


the text file itself contains *only* (no invisible characters): 

'default=someVariable'



OPTIONS I HAVE TRIED

1. Using FS Command - while ridiculously complicated in the Flash 

environment, I would've gone with this, except for that FS Command 

does not work in IE for the Mac - if this is incorrect, please let me 

know.


2. Setting the variable directly in the SRC tag for the player, eg: 

SRC="myMovie.fla?default=someVariable"  - but I have exactly the same 

problems with this approach.


3. Loading a movie containing my variable that is unique for each 

page, then loading the navigation movie into that movie  - this seems 

to work ok, except that certain browsers, after having cached the 

movie, did not properly display them in that only the initial movie 

would load but the global navigation movie did not (about 50% of the 

time).



SEE IT

go to www.mixedgreens.com and click on 'Mixed Greens' - the flash 

movie in question are the row of dots at the top (not the 'Site Map' 

- which seems to work fine)


(NOTE: Because of this problem, I have built a failsafe into the 

movie - if it does not find a text file, it simply displays the 

navigation with *all* sections set to default.)


Any ideas in how to solve this problem would be greatly appreciated.


Thnx.



-- 


:: a n d e r s  r a m s a y

:: c o n t e n t  i n t e g r a t o r


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:: a n d e r s @ m e d i a f a r m . c o m


     


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