Re: FLASH: Relative links & GetURL: Huge Problem?

[Colin Moock]

flashershocker [dot] com

,Internet writes:

>My Problem: Relative links don't work accross platforms even if BASE 

>attribute is set.

<SNIP>


About 8 months ago, I experienced two problems exactly like this which

I researched at great length. I did manage to find some answers and

solutions. Here's a repost of my original findings:


-Colin

-------------------------------------------------

REPOST # 1

-------------------------------------------------

Hi All,


Thank you to all those who tested out my links with a Mac and helped to

narrow down the definition of this problem. I talked to Erica @ MM

support again today, and I did some more testing, and now have some

answers:


I had two issues with linking from Flash movies to external HTML files:


1) ABSOLUTE BASE LINKS AREN'T FOLLOWED PROPERLY

**Description: 

When the "BASE" attribute of an EMBED tag is set to an absolute URL

with *both* a domain and a path (eg.

http://www.yourdomain.com/foo/bar/) links don't work.


**Cause: 

If the "BASE" attribute contains a path after a domain name, the Flash

plugin (not the ActiveX control) treats the last portion of the address

as a *file*, not a directory. The Flash plugin expects BASE to supply

only a host address, not a host address and a network path.

	

**Solution: 

Workaround. When specifying absolute paths in the base attribute, use

the web server's host name *only*. Then in all Flash movie links, give

the full path from the root level of the host (as specified in the BASE

attribute). 

Eg. A link to http://www.domain.com/products/software.html

would require the BASE to be set to "http://www.domain.com" and the

NETWORK URL in the GetURL action to be set to "products/software.html".




2) CLICKING LINKS CAUSES CRASHES ON MACS

**Description:

a) Nearly every type of Mac OS, Processor, and browser version (IE,

Netscape) will crash (some always, some occassionally) when a link is

clicked in the simple test Flash movie at:

"http://www1.iceinc.com/testllink/leveltwo/relativebase.html". Not all

machines will crash. Some are fine. Nearly no windows machine will

crash predictably. No ActiveX version of Flash will crash on the same

movie. The webserver is MS IIS 3.0 running on NT.

b) When the exact same movie is viewed from a Unix machine running

Netscape Enterprise server, no crashing happens on any machine.


**Cause: Possibly the webserver software? Possibly the webserver

operating system? (I know, it sounds impossible).


**Solution: Host files on Unix and hope. I can't actually isolate the

problem here, so I don't have a real solution.



-------------------------------------------------

REPOST # 2 (From Jon @ MM)

-------------------------------------------------

The bug you mention with the Mac crashing when you click on a link

sounds

like an obscure Netscape bug that we have seen. Are you accessing a

file on

a web server that is on the same IP subnet as the client machine? The

problem is that the web server actually responds to the client machines

request for the page too quickly, the browser is not ready to handle the

response and crashes. This is a VERY rare problem. If you are going

through

any sort of network router, as would be the case with a public web site,

there will be enough of a delay that Navigator will be ready for the web

server's response. Unfortunately, there is no way for us to work around

this

problem in the Flash plug-in. It is something that Netscape needs to

fix in

the browser.


Unless you are delivering the final site on a small Intranet, this

should

not be a problem for the end users of your site.


To summarize, the conditions needed for the problem are:

1) Mac Navigator

2) IIS Web server

3) The Mac client and Web server must be on the subnet

4) And a bit of bad luck since it does not typically happen everytime


Jon


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