Topic: Flash Question

I'm relatively new to flash, but I've been building webpages for a couple of years on and off. I'm working on a new project and would like to do it in flash. Anyway down to my question.

Is it possible to overlay a dhtml layer over a flash movie. And have the flash movie control what content is viewed in the layer? If not can it be done using frames? Any help would be appreciated.

I'm not 100% sure....
mm... but I don't think so man.

Yeah, as far as i know it's not possible to have anything over a Flash movie. Is there a good reason you need to have the separate DHTML layer and can't just do that within Flash? And what are you trying to control?

Chris

KAIROSinteractive

It is! It is! I've seen it done!! Since I'm wretched beyond wretched at dHTML, I never had the gupmtion to have a go at it, but honestly, the Flash movie lives in an HTML page, and you still ahve all the HTML stuff available.

I'm kicking myself now for not having the link any more. I saw this done at the VW site - the page was a high energy piece called "We had this idea" or something like that. I just tried to find it again and couldnt. Anyway...
Why would you want to? Here's one valid reason: how do you show a quicktime movie in Flash? You can't. It doesn't support Quicktime. You have to do some lame manuevers involving stripping the Quicktime movie into frames and then make it over again in Flash. VW had some funky movies and QRTV panoramas. Bingo. I couldn't figure out how they did it. Looked at the source and son-of-a-b - it was dHTML. The Quicktime was placed in a div layer above the Flash movie, with the visibility starting at "off".

I didn't save the link, but I *did* save the source

It began with a style sheet that specified divs for quicktime and flash:

#flash {

    position: absolute;

    visibility: visible;

    left: 0px;

    top: 0px;

    width: 600px;

    height: 400px;

    z-index: 1;

}



#quick {

    position: absolute;

    visibility: hidden;

    left: 700px;

    top: 100px;

    width: 240px;

    height: 198px;

    z-index: 20;

}

There was a *lot* of javascript. I got dizzy looking at it. But .... it can be done! I've seen it!

Thanks a lot for the help!

I wouldn't be doing it this way if I didn't have to. I'm building a flash interface around a 'virtual tour'. It's a java aplet that manipulates a picture taken with a special fish eye lens camera. I'm pretty new at flash so I didn't even want to think about how to integrate the java aplet into the flash movie itself.

Anyway thanks again!

Hello....
I'm not sure if this is related, but....I know you can have a text field with HTML
Does this only work for text? like links and stuff or would it work for an applet,
pictures and movies aswell?


Darkness is only the beginning

sorry, don't know much about this UBB and html stuff yet
btw...you can position a div over a swf but the swf will appear on top anyway...there's a similar problem with form object thingies too.

[This message has been edited by ShadowImage (edited 06-25-2001).]

[This message has been edited by ShadowImage (edited 06-25-2001).]

should I ask why you've posted all the large text....
or proceed to slap you instead....

Don't slap him. Just remind him that, even though html is supposedly off, typing code gives unexpected results!

I know what you're getting at with the question, but no. Suppport for HTML inside Flash is primative, and couldn't trigger a java applet. That wouldn't help anyway. The question was: can you place an element above the Flash movie using DHTML. You can't embed a java applet in Flash. Therefore you'd have to pull some fancy tricks to get it in a div above the swf.

BTW, the initial question never mentioned that a java applet would be contained in the div. But I don't suppose it makes any difference. I know even less about java than I do about dHTML!

Cool stuff, I stand corrected. If anyone figures it out or finds a link let me know, i'd love to see it.

You can have an HTML text field in Flash but I've only seen it with text and links, not sure about images or anything else.

Chris

KAIROSinteractive

I found it! I found it!
http://www.vw.com/concept/?

Click the Flash link for the microbus. Once the movie has loaded and you've figured out the navigation, click the "microbus movie" link. Watch quicktime seemingly from inside Flash. It's slick. View source and marvel at the code.

Oh yes.

Woo hoo.

~little dance~

Dude...that is tight. Ok, one of you DHTML gurus get in here and explain this to me simply

Chris

KAIROSinteractive

Damn there's alot of code....
I'm guessing that the movie is within another layer that is hidden,
when the user clicks on play it makes the layer visible...

It's hard to follow cos the commands are called by the swf file
It probably uses the GetURL thingy to call javascript