Member Avatar for benutzername123

Hi there.
I've been attempting for a good few months to develop a new webpage at www.mnc99.com.
You can see my current efforts at www.mnc99.com/index.php .

Notice that the movie you will receive (morning, afternoon, evening) depends on the time you access the page. You're more than welcome to inspect my code to see how I did it, but suffice to say it involved a lot of messing around with Javascript and SWFObject. But here is where I think my problems begin.

If you were to click any of the links besides "Skip Intro" on the flash intro, you'd be presented with a dead click if you were using anything but Internet Explorer. I have attempted to use the page with both Opera (SUPERIAR) and Firefox and have received the same, disappointing results on both.

The links all work on the movies when I'm viewing them locally, so what gives? Are my browsers employing some form of 'protection' to circumvent a misdiagnosed spam attack? How do I get around it?

SIMPLE ANSWERS, please! >_< I'm a complete code newbie.
Cheers!
!MNc99

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Member Avatar for benutzername123

Wah! Last-minute development. Having just checked with my system time turned to 9PM, It turns out the links for the evening animation (still in development thank you) work OK. Please, try for yourself and let me know how they react for you!

Member Avatar for TopDogger

Try taking the links out of the Flash presentation. The hyperlinks need to be visible in the HTML code.

Member Avatar for benutzername123

Excuse me?
I'm not sure I'm making myself clear enough. The flash movie (not a presentation) has to have those links (Art, animation, contact, credits, blah blah) because that is the PURPOSE of the animations, besides to look good. HTML is a different game altogether, especially since I'm using PHP.

Did you inspect the page or are you just talking from experience?

Member Avatar for TopDogger

Excuse me?
I'm not sure I'm making myself clear enough. The flash movie (not a presentation) has to have those links (Art, animation, contact, credits, blah blah) because that is the PURPOSE of the animations, besides to look good. HTML is a different game altogether, especially since I'm using PHP.

Did you inspect the page or are you just talking from experience?

No, you are not making yourself clear enough, or you would have had 10 responses to your question.

If you want to be absolutely correct, it is a Flash video, not a Flash movie.

And PHP has nothing to do with anything, because it looks like all that you might be using it for is to grab the local time from your server. PHP delivers HTML to a user's browser. Browsers do not work with PHP. They work with HTML code, so it is an HTML issue. BTW, if you are using PHP for the time, it will be the local server time and not the time zone of a user on another part of the planet.

Your problem is related to hyperlinks embedded in Flash. They do not exist in the HTML code. When I click on Credits, it is linked to a credits.htm HTML page page that does not exist. What are the links supposed to do?

If it works on your local PC, then the problem could be that you are calling a local resource that exists on your PC given the path to it in your code, but doesn't work on the server because the path is different or the resource has not been copied to the server

BTW, these types of sites are always a disaster with search engines. There is nothing on the page for search engines to work with, and most cannot read or see your Flash video or links embedded in Flash.

SIMPLE ANSWERS, please! >_< I'm a complete code newbie.

This explains a lot, except for the attitude. Most newbies appreciate any help they can get.

Member Avatar for benutzername123

I'm well aware that the pages don't LINK anywhere per-sé. The site is still under heavy construction- if you just check mnc99.com you'll be confronted with a 'construction' page.

Having battled with PHP previously I learnt the hard way that the time function always reflects serverside time. The applet that changes to ahow you morning, afternoon or evening versions of the site is based on JavaScript, with an SWFObject tag to include the flash movies themselves. This much is all fine and dandy.

What I was asking is, when one were to click a button in the flash movie (there's more to it than the video) are they sent somewhere or do they receive a dead click? Judging from your reply I can ascertain somewhat that the links work OK for you, which is good news from where I'm standing.

My problem lies in that Opera does not seem to respond to the flash movie's prompts to send it to another page-- the 'links' (buttons) work fine in IE and Firefox (as far as I can tell) but in Opera they just refuse.

I have no idea whether or not this is a problem of the code I'm using, if it is an issue with Flash (which I doubt is likely, since I've actually changed the actionscript for the link to several different variants, all with similar results) or simply a bug in Opera, which has a reputation for interpreting site code quite literally, which can cause websites that appear to work fine in more lenient browsers to look garbled and incorrect. Again, I have some doubt about this since nothing is shown on the Error console when I attempt to get a reaction from the Flash movie.

Please understand my intention is not to offend or seem ungracious- it just seems like we're on different wavelengths. I hope I have rationalised my point to a higher standard thus.

(PS: I'm sure search engines will eat the site up, but they'll have to wait until I'm done making the thing. :p)

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