Topic: Mac doesn't like my Flash file

I just launched a new website for a client of mine http://mcd-adv.com . When the client views the site on his Mac, the flash file wants to save as a download instead of opening within the frames. I have the mirror of this site at http://www.wavmixer.com/mcd and everything works fine on his Mac. I know it's not the scripting or the flash file because they are the same on both servers. It shouldn't be a problem with his browser because it works fine when viewing the site hosted on my wavmixer doamin. It may be a difference between the two servers, but I have no idea why it might do this. Can some of you Mac users take a look at this site and tell me if you are seeing the same problem? Maybe someone has an idea what might be causing this?

This is more of a WTF question than it is a review request, but I wasn't sure where to put this as it could fit in a couple of categories and this is a freshly launched site. Sorry if I placed this in the wrong area.

My client is on Mac Panther OS10.3, IE 5.2.3



[This message has been edited by Wavmixer (edited 04-02-2004).]

This isn't a Mac problem, it happens on the PC for me using Firefox or Mozilla (IE and Opera7 work fine thought), but only for the mcd-adv.com domain.

I'd stab a guess at this bing a web server configuration issue. Not really sure how you'd go about correcting it though. You might have better luck asking this in the server side coding forum, even though it isn't a coding issue, the regular peeps there might be able to sort it out for you.

well, it's either a server configuration issue (server sending out wrong mime type for .swf - it could possibly be corrected with an appropriate .htacces - but I wouldn't bet on it), or an issue with the browser being unable to determine the plugin, due to the flash file being directly loaded.
I'd try to replace that with an html file that loads the actual flash (using whatever html code flash outputs when ask it.) before trying to fix the server's mime type.

so long,

Tyberius Prime

For what it's worth, I looked at both pages in Safari on a Mac running 10.2 and they both loaded perfectly...

Actually, I was probably wrong with my first post as I didn't look at the code you were using to laod the movie.

You're loading the flash movie by specifying the URL of the frame source as src="Art_Scrolling.swf".

Don't do that!

Most web servers won't know how to handle that kind of file and it'll be sent to the browser as an unknown file, which usually results in the browser prompting the user to download it. Some browsers will try and read the file headers to sniff out what they should do with the file (Like IE and Safari), or if the webserver knows the file type then it'll send the appropiate HTTP headers to tell the browser what it is, but you should never rely on that when dealing with stuff like this.

Actualy, I'm pertty sure IE would do the same thing if I didn't have Flash MX (not the flash player, the authoring environment) installed because AFAIK the flash player (browser plugin) doesn't setup any flash mime types for the Windows OS, but the full flash package does. So anyone without the full flash authoring environment installed will probably have the same problem.

You should make an HTML page for the flash file and load the flash through the HTML page using an <object> element. Read through the flash manual or the help files on how to correctly publish flash movies on the web.

It's amazing what you can learn when you read the manual. .

Thank you all for your input. I have uploaded a revision incorporating a HTML page calling up the swf file within the code. I can't see a difference on my end, but maybe some of you can.



[This message has been edited by Wavmixer (edited 04-05-2004).]

Well, it works fine in Firefox & Mozilla now.

Although, seeing as you're designing websites for clients, I'm shocked that you don't have multiple browsers to test the site in. Perhaps you should make en effort to download some of the major one like Opera, Mozilla/Firefox and a plain text browser wouldn't go astray either.

Actually I do have IE, Mozilla, and Opera on the Windows side, as well as Konqueror and Mozilla on the Linux side. I am lacking a Mac box though, and it was IE on Mac that was giving me the problem. I have already decided that I need to add a Mac to my collection someday soon.

Oh, my apologies then. Although, the problem you experienced with Mac/IE *was* happening with Mozilla/PC for me.