Re: FLASH: Page impressions

[RedStar]

Tewes,


One way to solve your problem is to have Flash send the data you need.

If you define the information you want to collect and the events that

should generate the information then you can trigger the sending of the

relevant vars to a cgi that will save them for later analysis.

This is something that you can present as an added value only possible

with Flash ;) and will help in changing the mindset of the 'difficult'

clients while at the same time it can be used to justify a higher price

;)

The actual implementation of such a process is easy, but it does depend

on the particular setup you have.

For example with an ASP capable server you could do something like this,

even if it is rather elementary and should only be seen as an example

of what can be done :

Star by defining what you want to collect, let's say it's something

like page impressions, where you define your pages as being certain

relevant flash movie frames. At this stage you should also define what

you want to collect and setup a database that will collect this info. To

keep it simple let's suppose you pass the sessionID to every flash movie

that the user loads to use as a tracking var and you will also send info

on what the user was viewing at the moment.

To implement the tracking var use the following snippet in the page that

loads the flash movie. Append to the movie name <%response.write("?id="

Session.SessionID)%>.

You can use any other type of tracking var. If you do use sessionID

don't rely on it for use as a unique indexing key in your database as

you will be liable to get repeat values if you ever restart your server

(and this is a normal event ;) ).

Now that you have a tracking var in your flash movie whenever you want

to collect info just seed the additional vars you want to send with the

proper values and post them off to another asp page that will collect

them and place them in a database.

You need not implement a check in flash that all is ok as this sending

of information should be a one way only event, i.e. from flash to the

database.

Now all you need to do is to use the collected information to build any

kind of report you want.

Think a bit about this and how you can use it in your case. I'm sure you

will come up with a workable example that you can then use to your

advantage in 'convincing' your clients that not only it's a good idea

but that it's even worth the extra expense.


.redstar.


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