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Flash Problems
OK, having already posted about my issues with legacy sites no longer working in FW5.2, whereby none of the Flash elements display on a page, I have tried recreating a new document in FW5 from scratch & encountered the same problems. After lots of investigation I have sussed the reason for the elements not appearing. When publishing the site Freeway is failing to add the swf files to the Resources folder! I have to manually copy all swf files to the Resources folder as it is not done automatically as is the case with all other versions of FW. Has any body else encountered this issue?
not sure if it’s related, but in the past few versions FW would convert my video files to QTime automatically.
Hi David,
We have had no other reports of this happening. Could you try making a new document, drawing an HTML item, importing a SWF that needs no other resources to work and preview in the browser to see if that works.
If not could you go to File>Save As Archive and compress and send us the resulting folder please (to support(a)softpress.com)
Many thanks,
Joe
On 20 Aug 2008, at 10:31, graphic_inc wrote:
OK, having already posted about my issues with legacy sites no longer working in FW5.2, whereby none of the Flash elements display on a page, I have tried recreating a new document in FW5 from scratch & encountered the same problems. After lots of investigation I have sussed the reason for the elements not appearing. When publishing the site Freeway is failing to add the swf files to the Resources folder! I have to manually copy all swf files to the Resources folder as it is not done automatically as is the case with all other versions of FW. Has any body else encountered this issue?
For free and responsive Freeway support visit http://www.softpress.com/support/help_desk.php
Sometime around 20/8/08 (at 05:31 -0400) graphic_inc said:
Has any body else encountered this issue?
Nope. Just as a sanity check, what kind of SWF files are these? How are you putting them into your pages?
k
Sometime around 20/8/08 (at 06:08 -0400) duotone said:
not sure if it’s related, but in the past few versions FW would convert my video files to QTime automatically.
Hmm? I believe what must have been happening is that Freeway would see that your video is something that can be handled by QuickTime, and use the appropriate QuickTime code to get it to play, using the QuickTime plugin, in a browser.
This is very different from ‘converting your video content to QuickTime’; if it needs to be converted to something that QuickTime can play from something that’s not directly compatible you will need to do this yourself before putting it in the page. Sorry!
k
Joe, I’ve done some more testing & discovered that the issue arises if the swf files I want to import reside in the same folder as the source FW5 document. If however the swf files reside in a separate folder the problem does not occur. Very odd.
Keith, the swf files do not contain any video content - they are a basic swfs containing animated elements. Had they been flv files then yes I would expect a Quicktime issue.
Thanks to you both for your feedback.
On 20 Aug 2008, at 14:37, graphic_inc wrote:
Joe, I’ve done some more testing & discovered that the issue arises if the swf files I want to import reside in the same folder as the source FW5 document. If however the swf files reside in a separate folder the problem does not occur. Very odd.
Could you elaborate on this please. How are you importing? Would you be able to provide me with some detailed steps so I can repeat the problem here please.
Cheers,
Joe
For free and responsive Freeway support visit http://www.softpress.com/support/help_desk.php
OK, create a graphic in Flash & publish a swf file (or you can use an existing swf you might already have) & save these to their own folder.
Create a new FW5 document & save this in the same folder your Flash & swf file resides in. This folder will also be where you opt to publish the FW site.
Now create a box in your FW document, either html or graphic (it makes no difference) that has the same dimensions as the swf file you are going to import. Import your swf file & publish the page.
The first time you do this if you opt to also preview in a browser the page will display the swf as it should. Try it again & the swf will not be displayed. Try again & it will. Now you see me - now you don’t.
If you look in the Resources folder for the site you will see that the swf file has not be published.
Repeat this whole process only this time make sure your swf file resides OUTSIDE of the folder your FW document resides in. Import your swf & publish as before. Check the Resources folder & the swf has been published.
If you can’t make sense of this or recreate the problem I can send you 2 examples that demonstrate what I’m referrring to.
Sometime around 20/8/08 (at 09:37 -0400) graphic_inc said:
Had they been flv files then yes I would expect a Quicktime issue.
Okay, I think this isn’t actually relevant for the original query. But still, QuickTime is not used at all for playing FLV content, and Freeway has never attempted to do that kind of conversion.
k
Sometime around 20/8/08 (at 10:07 -0400) graphic_inc said:
Create a new FW5 document & save this in the same folder your Flash & swf file resides in. This folder will also be where you opt to publish the FW site.
I suspect this is where the problems begin.
Freeway wants to have a site folder that is used for nothing else at all, as it prefers to be in complete charge over what goes in there. This is recommended practise, and publishing into the same folder that contains things you’re using in your site is most definitely not.
Repeat this whole process only this time make sure your swf file resides OUTSIDE of the folder your FW document resides in. Import your swf & publish as before. Check the Resources folder & the swf has been published.
Bingo! :-)
It isn’t a matter of where the Freeway document lives, it is all down to publishing into a dedicated folder or not. And ‘not’ is generally not a good idea.
k
Keith, I take your point about publishing to a folder that contains nothing but files created by FW, however when working with Flash documents that load external movies into levels or movie clips, these swf need to reside in the same folder in order to work. In every other version of FW until now this has NEVER been an issue. I guess I will have to accept that I will now have to repeatedly take a longer route when previewing sites I design that incorporate a lot of Flash content.
D
Absolutely. I’ll get this behavior logged anyway but we always recommend leaving the Site Folder as is and never place any of your original media files inside it, unless you can easily make them again that is! Placing your Freeway file inside the Site Folder can also have implications. The structure we recommend is:
My Site (overall folder for your site)
Media (Place your original images, videos, anything that will be
imported into Freeway or useful to refer to at some point in here) Site Folder (Freeway will publish into this, don’t add anything in here*) My Site.freeway (your Freeway document)
*Some things will need to be added in oder to preview them locally but it’s always best to try and add them through Freeway and have it manage the site for you if you can
Hope this helps.
Joe
On 20 Aug 2008, at 15:28, Keith Martin wrote:
Sometime around 20/8/08 (at 10:07 -0400) graphic_inc said:
Create a new FW5 document & save this in the same folder your Flash & swf file resides in. This folder will also be where you opt to publish the FW site.
I suspect this is where the problems begin.
Freeway wants to have a site folder that is used for nothing else at all, as it prefers to be in complete charge over what goes in there. This is recommended practise, and publishing into the same folder that contains things you’re using in your site is most definitely not.
Repeat this whole process only this time make sure your swf file resides OUTSIDE of the folder your FW document resides in. Import your swf & publish as before. Check the Resources folder & the swf has been published.
Bingo! :-)
It isn’t a matter of where the Freeway document lives, it is all down to publishing into a dedicated folder or not. And ‘not’ is generally not a good idea.
k
For free and responsive Freeway support visit http://www.softpress.com/support/help_desk.php
And if your Flash movie needs additional movies in order to work, it’s always best to avoid “magic” behavior, like putting the files in the site folder and hoping Freeway notices them.
What absolutely will work is if you either create a scratch page (one that you do not link to or from) and place all of these additional movies on it (anywhere on the page you like), or use either Upload Stuff or Upload Extra Resources (Actions from Tim Plumb or Softpress, respectively) to upload these additional files. For one thing, this will cause the sidecar movies to end up in the same Resources folder as the parent movie — and this is highly nondeterministic behavior on Freeway’s part, and nothing you should rely on working the same way twice — and for another, it will mean that any changes you make to any of these movies will be tracked by Freeway and updated on the server whenever anything changes.
Walter
Freeway user since 1997
