Flash Projectors and CD Burning FAQ

by Radina Matic - DiDi	Index 1. Why using Standalone Projector? 2. Mac Projector vs. Windows Projector 3. FSCommand for Standalone Projector     a) PC/Windows issues     b) Macintosh issues 4. Burning CDs with projectors     a) Burning on Mac     b) Burning on PC 5. Resources     a) FSCommand/Projectors     b) CD Burning

1. Why using Standalone Projector?

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Whenever you want to distribute your Flash creations offline (and you do not want to worry if the user has Flash Player installed or not) you have the option to publish your movie as Standalone Projector. In File menu chose Pubblish Settings and check the Windows Projector or Macintosh Projector option in the dialog window. This will "wrap" your .swf movie into a Standalone Flash Player which can be reproduced outside the browser. You can find the Standalone Player (together with Player Installers) in the folder where where you installed Flash on your computer (usualy it is C:\Program files\Macromedia\Flash 5\Players on Windows).

2. Mac Projector vs. Windows Projector index   Standalone Projector for Windows has normal .exe extension, while Mac Projector published on Windows version of Flash has the extension .hqx. HQX is not executable file, it is form of encoding (kind of Mac's Zip file) which packs together the two file forks Mac files have: Data fork and Resource fork. It will not open on PC if you click on it (because it has to be decoded), and it will not work if you burn it just like that on CD with PC (for burning issues see bellow). If you have one main movie and you want to load other .swf files in it, you ONLY need to publish the main one as .exe/hqx, not all of them.

3. FSCommand for Standalone Projector

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You can access fscommands for standalone player through Actions panel:

Flash 5

Flash MX

a) PC/Windows issues

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Flash 5 supports six FSCommands:

• fscommand("fullscreen", "true");
  
  

• allowscale - If you want to mantain aspect ratio of your movie and prevent it from being scaled by the user you should set this option to 'false':

  fscommand("allowscale", "false");
  
  Sometimes (when you set your projector to fullscreen and you want to mantain its aspect ratio by allowscale/false), when you have some objects outside the stage, they will eventualy be seen even if you don't want them to. You can solve this problem by putting a Mask with the size of your stage on the topmost layer of your movie to cover all off-stage objects. Another thing to remember is that any .swf you load into the main projector inherits its allowscale settings.
  
  

• showmenu - 'False' argument will disable the upper menu (File/View/Control/Help) and all right click menu options except "About Macromedia..." in Flash 5 and "Configuration" and "About..." in Flash MX.
  
  fscommand ("showmenu", "false");
  
  There is no way to eliminate completely right click menu (or put our own one) without some 3rd party tool (even though you could do it in Hex Editor if you know how - check Sx's threads in Resources). Title bar ("Flash" in Flash 5 and "Macromedia Flash Player 6 " in Flash MX) and icon can also be removed/changed only with 3rd party tools.
  
  
• trapallkeys - If you don't use this option (or you put it to 'false') user can exit fullscreen mode of your projector by pressing Esc key. 'True' argument locks all keys, but user can still access Status bar by pressing Windows key - if projector is set fullscreen - and exit your projector by pressing Alt + F4. Some non-advanced users may not know how to use these keys combinations, so be sure to put some exit button if your projector is set to fullscreen and you used trapallkeys/true.
  
  fscommand("trapallkeys", "true");
  
  
• quit - As its name says, it closes your projector. You can put it into button or frame (no parameters needed):
  
  fscommand("quit");
  
  
• exec - This command revealed itself to be the most interessting because it gives us the oportunity to make movies communicate with other programs, open files in their default applications and lot more (see Resources for more details):
  
  fscommand ("exec", "c:\\windows\\notepad.exe");
  
  This will open Notepad from Flash 5 projector. "Exec" fscommand in Flash MX is severely crippled for security reasons and it does not allow passing arguments anymore. It can only open programs (applications, not specific documents in their default programs as it was possible before) which must be located in the fscommand folder on the root of projector file (no need to put this fscommand folder in the path, Flash already knows it is supposed to look for it there).

b) Macintosh issues

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Normaly all above code should work on Macintosh platform without problems (Flash was made to be crossplatform). One thing you will not be able to do with Mac projector is to write variables on user's HD. Also, when opening files with FSCommand in Flash 5 projectors you should remember to use colons (:) (and not slashes (/) as in PC) to separate folders in a pathname: FSCommand ("exec", ":folder:filename");. On the other side, OSX uses standard Unix path notation (/) and not colon.

Another way to open specific file with Mac projector is by using applescript, which you should compile as an application in AppleScript Editor and then run it with FSCommand. Your applescript and file you want to open with should be in the same folder. Here are 2 examples:

There seems to be a problem/bug with Flash MX projectors for Mac: basicaly if you have to load .swfs in your main movie it will not stay fullscreen even if you put the FSCommand for it correctly. Workaround for this problem is to create an empty "container" movie with only FSCommand for fullscreen, and then load your content into level1 or higher. That seems to be the only way Mac projector will stay fullscreen (see Resources below for more details).

Unfortunately, there are no 3rd party tools for Mac that could help you enhance your projectors as there are for PC.

4. Burning CDs with projectors

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Ok, you have your flaming projector and you want to burn it on CD for distribution. Presuming most of us know how to burn CD for our own platform, only burning hybrid CD (crossplatform) will be covered here.

Since Flash projectors on CD have to be loaded completely in computer's memory before they start to play, beware of their size. Even though there is no definite answer (using preloaders and loading .swfs into main movie may help), it is recommended that they should not be bigger then 25 Mb (Macromedia's original advice is: no bigger then 4MB!!! - see resouces for the technote). If you have to do a bigger project, you may consider switching to Director.

a) Burning on Mac

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b) Burning on PC

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When you open the program it will be in the default Project Mode and Hybrid view.

Give the name to the Project, launch Explorer and drag your files in their places: PC projector, autorun file and icon into the ISO view of the MacImage window (files with yellow spots in the picture) and Mac projector into the HSF view (file with green spot). Do not worry about decoding of .hqx file, program takes care of it. Shared files (both yellow and green spots) go into ISO/HSF view because this way PC users will see only PC files, Mac users will see only Mac files and both will see shared files.

Once you finished all this, you will have to compile image file: choose Compile option from the Projects menu (or click fourth button on the toolbar - look for the pointer in the picture above), give the name to your image file and the program will do the rest. All you have to do now is burn compiled image to CD with burning software.

To implement the Autostart feature for Mac you should take one more step. Reopen the compiled image in the Partition Mode (switch mode in the first item of Options menu), select the file you want to autostart (your Mac projector), and choose Autolaunch feature from the right click menu. Resave the image and it will be ready for burning.

Almost all burning packages are capable of burning image files. In Nero you should choose Burn Image option from File menu, open your image file (switch to "all files" type to see it), accept the default values from pop up window and it will burn image to CD. And that's it...

PC users can make autorun.inf file in text editor (Notepad) and it should look like the one on the picture on the left. Autorun should be on the root of your CD but your projector and icon do not have to be. Just remember to change autorun.inf file if you plan for any reason to put your projector in specific folder (the same is valid for making autorun.inf for burning hybrid CD on Mac).

5. Resources

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a) FSCommand/Projectors

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b) CD Burning

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