Flash Sound for Dynamic Sites - Page 12

The function initialCheck detects browsers and languages. I will provide it in a 'clipped' version in the downloadable source code.

The only thing that matters here is that browser[1] holds 'IE' if it is Internet Explorer,'NE' if it is Netscape and 'NN' if other.

Use your favorite function to detect the browser. The important thing is that the code should be branched for IE or NE.

The var 'soundTag' will hold the text that references the name of the Movie Clip

The var 'reg' stores a Regular Expression. This regular expression will help parse the URL of the HTML element that called the function.

Remember that the syntax of /\W/ means a range of any non-alphanumerical character with the exception of the underscore.

if (browser[1]=='IE'&&window.event.srcElement.getAttribute('pathname')!=null){
soundTag = window.event.srcElement.getAttribute('pathname');
}
else if(browser[1]=='IE'){
soundTag = window.event.srcElement.parentElement.getAttribute('pathname');
}

soundTag=soundTag.split(reg);

Here we get to our first branch. Depending on which browser is being used we will retrieve the HREF attribute of the <A> or <IMG> tag that fired this function in different ways.

In case of Netscape we will use the TARGET property of the EVENT object to achieve this.

If it is Internet Explorer we will use the EVENT object too, but due to events 'bubbling up', the syntax is a bit more complex.

We use the split function (from the string object) plus the Regular Expression to parse the URL and split it every time we find a non-alphanumeric character. Here's an example:

original URL: www.mysite.com/web/mypage.htm after splitting the string we get an array that looks like 0=www 1=mysite 2=com 3=web 4=mypage 5=htm The length for this array is 6 so, we will use array.length-2 so we get at array[4] which equals 'mypage'. This array element is the tag that has the same value as the name of one of the Movie Clips inside the Flash Movie

}

Notice that we are checking the browser and whether the Flash Movie loaded at least 1%. This is a good place to insert error handling code since these checks are useless if the invisible frame cannot load its page. Also notice that to access the Flash Embed you have to use the EMBEDS array in Netscape or the name of the embed in IE.

PercentLoaded () is a method of the Flash Player that returns a number indicating the percentage of the movie that has been downloaded so far. If the movie loaded at least 1% it means that no problems arose while embedding the movie. This does not mean that the movie is ready to play, so you could check if the movie is 100% loaded before trying to play it.

TPlay (target as String) is a method of the Flash Player that lets you play a Movie Clip by passing the method a string with the name of the target (Movie Clip). See how the method gets its target name from the URL already parsed.

}

if (browser[1]=='IE'&&parent.soundtown.document.misonido.PercentLoaded()!=0){ parent.frames['soundtown'].document.misonido.TStopPlay(etiqueta[etiqueta.length-2]); parent.frames['soundtown'].document.misonido.TGotoFrame(etiqueta[etiqueta.length-2],1);

} }

return; }

The TStopPlay(target as String) method instructs the player to stop playing a Movie Clip, accepting a string as the Movie Clip name.

After stopping the player we go to Frame #1 using the TGotoFrame (target as String, frame as Integer) method which accepts a string as a Movie Clip name and an integer as a frame number. The TGotoFrame method makes sure that every time we play the Movie Clip it will start from the beginning.