June 10, 2001 - The Image behind a Sound Track | WebReference

June 10, 2001 - The Image behind a Sound Track

Yehuda Shiran June 10, 2001
The Image behind a Sound Track
Tips: June 2001

Yehuda Shiran, Ph.D.
Doc JavaScript

In some of your applications you may need to use Flash movies and JavaScript directly, without any prepackaged APIs such as FlashSound JavaScript API. You will enjoy more features, methods, and properties, but you'll have to take care of all the tiny details that are taken for granted when using FlashSound API, for example.

One of the "tiny" details is embedding the Flash object. The JavaScript file flashmoviecheck.js does exactly this, as well as other stuff. For example, it checks whether a Flash player exists (Flash plug-in or ActiveX control), and whether its version is higher than the minimum required by the application.

We used to embed Flash sound tracks with flashsoundcheck.js include file. One of the differences between flashsoundcheck.js and flashmoviecheck.js is that the object's WIDTH and HEIGHT are set to 1 pixel for sound tracks (2 pixels for the WIDTH in Netscape Navigator), and to 100% for Flash movies. Suppose now that we want to use flashmoviecheck.js for sound tracks as well, in order to streamline the Web site management. What will be shown in the empty space for sound tracks? Let's try it with animalsounds.swf.

Use the following links to play, rewind, zoom in, zoom out, and zoom to an area of the space allocated to the Flash object:

Rewind | Play | Zoom In by 2x | Zoom Out by 2x | Zoom to Area

As you can see, you can read the author's comments in the space above. This paragraph behaves like a Flash image. You can zoom in and out, and to a specific area of the paragraph. Here is the code for the links above:

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript" SRC="flashmoviecheck.js"></SCRIPT>
<A href="javascript://" onclick="javascript:mySwf.Rewind(); return false">Rewind</A> | 
<A href="javascript://" onclick="javascript:mySwf.Play(); return false">Play</A> |
<A href="javascript://" onclick="javascript:mySwf.Zoom(50); return false">Zoom In by 2x</A> | 
<A href="javascript://" onclick="javascript:mySwf.Zoom(200); return false">Zoom Out by 2x</A> | 
<A href="javascript://" onclick="javascript:mySwf.SetZoomRect(0, 400, 1480, 1240); return false">Zoom to Area</A>
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">
  Flash_embedSWF("animalsounds.swf");
  var mySwf = window.document.sonify;
</SCRIPT>