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Yehuda Shiran June 24, 2001
Detecting a Flash Movie's Width
Tips: June 2001

Yehuda Shiran, Ph.D.
Doc JavaScript

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 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 flashcheck2.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.

Use the TGetProperty() Flash method to get attributes of the Flash movie. One of the properties is WIDTH. You may get this property, but you cannot set it. The WIDTH property designates the current frame's width. You can get Flash properties by their sequence numbers. You get a property like this:

  mySwf.TGetProperty(timeline, propertyNumber);
The WIDTH property is no. 8, so you get its value by going:

  mySwf.TGetProperty(timeline, 8);
Play the following movie by clicking the Play link. Get the WIDTH of the movie by clicking the Get WIDTH link. Notice that the width of the movie changes as it loads. Click the Get WIDTH link a few times during the loading period:

Rewind | Play | Get WIDTH

Here is the source code:

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript" SRC="flashcheck2.js"></SCRIPT>
<A href="javascript://" onclick="javascript:mySwf2.Rewind(); return false">Rewind</A> | 
<A href="javascript://" onclick="javascript:mySwf2.Play(); return false">Play</A> | 
<A href="javascript://" onclick="javascript:alert(mySwf2.TGetProperty('/', 8)); return false">Get WIDTH</A>
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">
  var mySwf2 = Flash_embedSWF("opener.swf", "opener");
</SCRIPT>

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