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JavaScript-to-Flash communication

Flash movies provide a number of standard methods that can be accessed by JavaScript:

GetVariable(variable_name)

— Retrieves the value of a Flash movie variable

GotoFrame(frame_number)

— Sets the current Flash frame to the given frame number

IsPlaying()

— Indicates whether the Flash movie is current playing

LoadMovie(layer_num, url)

— Loads a Flash movie at the given URL into the given Flash

layer

Pan(x, y, mode)

— Pans a zoomed movie to the given coordinate. The mode argument is either

0, to consider the coordinates as pixel values, or 1, to consider the coordinates as percentages.

PercentLoaded()

— Returns the percent of the Flash movie that has been loaded (a number 0

to 100)

Play()

— Plays the movie from the current position

Rewind()

— Sets the movie back to the first frame

SetVariable(variable_name, value)

— Sets the value of a Flash movie variable

SetZoomRect(left, top, right, bottom)

— Sets the rectangle to zoom in on

StopPlay()

— Stops the Flash movie

TotalFrames()

— Returns the total number of frames in the Flash movie

Zoom(percent)

— Zooms in by a given percentage

These methods work directly on the movie object itself, so to stop a movie named

ExampleMovie

, you can

do this:

var oFlashMovie = getFlashMovie(“ExampleMovie”);

oFlashMovie.StopPlay();

To get the total number of frames in the movie, use

TotalFrames()

. However, you must be aware of

some cross-browser compatibility issues. In Internet Explorer on Windows, there is a bug where

TotalFrames

is an integer value instead of a function. It is necessary to check for this using

typeof

determine if

TotalFrames

is a number or a function for cross-browser functionality:

function getTotalFrames(sName) {

var oFlashMovie = document.getElementById(sName);

if (typeof oFlashMovie == “function”) {

return oFlashMovie.TotalFrames();

} else {

return oFlashMovie.TotalFrames;

}

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Interacting with Plugins

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