Re: HTML for Flash movies

[John Dowdell]

>The entire result worked perfectly, except that it was unacceptably slow. On

>accessing the first page, a grey page appeared for 20-30 seconds (with a

>33600 connection ). I put this down to the fact that the browser had to call

>MM *as well as* our site -every time- regardless of whether the user had the

>plugin or not...


Ah, so it was the initial 30K load of all the external routines in the .JS

file that was important for you.


It's true it's there. If you wish you could handroll shorter routines

within the page itself. To be able to specify versions across browsers and

then to easily install the most appropriate package, all with a few

high-level commands -- that is the goal of the Smart Shockwave button.


>From your mention of "every time" it almost sounds as if you're calling

those routines more than once. No need to... just put the button on first

entry.



>My impatience comes from the fact that I feel that I have wasted a great

>deal of time, on and off, redoing the intro's for our Flashed sites purely

>because of the plugin problem... And then to feel mislead by MM over the

>"Smart Button" issue just sent me over the top.


The main problem with the phrase "browser detection" is that it means so

many different things to so many different people. Two words hide many

meanings.


I, too, wish that browsers had simple and universal ways to tell you what

they could do. Each one is implementing different parts, and making these

variations easy to track and control is the goal of the new auto-install

routines. That universality does require a big ol' script, called by only a

few simple lines in your own JavaScript.



>I now have a mainly home-grown system which seems to work well (using a mix

>of server-side perl, client-side javascript & a trick with a Flash movie)


Well, that's all that's important. <g>  Glad to hear it's smooth now for you.


jd




John Dowdell, Macromedia Tech Support, San Francisco CA US


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