Member Avatar for captainSheepdog

Greetings all,

I am a junior C#/ASP.NET web developer and have been working for about 3 weeks now.

Recently, the graphics person here at work gave me a .swf flash file, an xml file that contained content for the .swf file and a content folder that contained slideshow images referenced in the .xml file. The flash file is named preview.swf and the xml file is named banner.xml

I have been attempting to embed this slideshow but the only thing i'm getting is the load icon. (Spinning circle in Win 7/IE 9)

I have placed the .swf and the .xml files in the root folder with the rest of the web pages and the content folder in the root as well. The paths referenced in the .xml file are good.

Here is the code im using to embed the slideshow on the html page:

<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" 
        codebase="
        cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"  
        width="900" height="361"  id="mymoviename"> 
        <param name="movie" value="preview.swf?xml_source=banner.xml" />  
        <param name="quality" value="high" /> 
        <param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff" /> 
        <embed src="preview.swf?xml_source=banner.xml" quality="high" bgcolor="#ffffff"
            width="900" height="361" 
            name="Weather King Intro" align="" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" 
            pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"> 
        </embed>

...and here is the contents of the .xml file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<!-- slideShowTime - if set to 0, there is no autoslide -->

<banner width = "970" height = "361"
		backgroundColor = "0xffffff"
		backgroundTransparency = "100"
		
		startWith = "1"
		barHeight = "45"
		fadeTransition = "false"
		verticalTransition = "false"
		controllerTop = "false"
		transitionSpeed = "1"
		titleX = "0"
		titleY = "0">

	<items>
		<item>
			<title></title>
			<path>/content/images/FreeDelivery.jpg</path>
			<url>http://www.WeatherKing.com</url>
			<target>_blank</target>
			<bar_color>0xeacf2a</bar_color>
			<bar_transparency>70</bar_transparency>
			<slideShowTime>5</slideShowTime>
		</item>
		
		<item>
			<title></title>
			<path>/content/images/Quality.jpg</path>
			<url>http://www.WeatherKing.com</url>
			<target>_blank</target>
			<bar_color>0xeacf2a</bar_color>
			<bar_transparency>50</bar_transparency>
			<slideShowTime>5</slideShowTime>
		</item>
		
		<item>
			<title></title>
			<path>/content/images/RentToOwn.jpg</path>
			<url>http://www.WeatherKing.com</url>
			<target>_blank</target>
			<bar_color>0xeacf2a</bar_color>
			<bar_transparency>70</bar_transparency>
			<slideShowTime>5</slideShowTime>
		</item>			
	</items>
		
</banner>

As I have no previous experience in flash, any assistance would be greatly appreciated!

-Sheepdog

  • 2 Contributors
  • 1 Reply
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  • 1 Day Discussion Span
  • Latest Post Latest Post by Member #46692

Dani AI

Generated

Important: Adobe officially ended Flash Player support on December 31, 2020 and major browsers block or no longer support the Flash plugin, so running SWF content in a modern browser is fragile. For preservation or short-term playback, using an emulator or the standalone player is the practical route; long-term, migrating to HTML5/JS is the recommended path. ()

Practical checklist for the “spinning” loader reported by (and echoing ’s note about filenames/caching):

  • Verify the SWF and the XML/images are actually fetched: load the SWF URL (with the parameter) directly and watch the Network tab (or curl) for banner.xml and each image; look for 404/403 or 0-byte responses.
  • Confirm filename case matches the server (Linux hosts are case-sensitive). Clear caches or add cache-busting while testing.
  • Many SWFs read parameters via loaderInfo.parameters (FlashVars) rather than only from a query string; try passing the XML path with FlashVars instead of only appending ?xml_source=... to the SWF. Example:
    <param name="flashvars" value="xml_source=banner.xml" />
<!-- and in embed: flashvars="xml_source=banner.xml" -->

    The loaderInfo.parameters object is populated from both the query string and FlashVars. Also ensure the server serves correct MIME types (e.g., .swf → application/x-shockwave-flash) or add the mapping in IIS/.htaccess. (doc.neolao.com)

If the XML still never appears inside the SWF, enable Flash logging and debug traces (use the debug player and an mm.cfg to produce flashlog.txt) to capture loader errors and traces; inspect the log for XML or URL errors. If images or XML are hosted on another domain, ensure an appropriate crossdomain.xml policy is present at the host root so Flash can request those resources. (open-flash.github.io)

Longer-term options: extract the images and recreate the slideshow with an HTML5/CSS/JS carousel (safer and future-proof). If keeping the SWF online temporarily, Ruffle (an open-source Flash emulator) is a widely used interim solution to run SWFs in modern browsers while migration is planned. Adobe’s guidance is to migrate to open standards wherever possible. (adobe.com)

Summary of next steps: check network requests and server responses first, try passing the XML via FlashVars, confirm MIME types and casing, enable the Flash debug log for actionable errors, and evaluate Ruffle or HTML5 migration depending on scope and security constraints.

Member Avatar for Member #46692

Assuming all things being equal.

In other words, testing the thing locally on your machine the images load up successfully, one thing I noticed is that on hosting sites if your images are named:

something.JPG

That's with the extensions capitalised it throws a spanner in the works if your xml file calls for them in lower-case. It might also have something to do with caching as flash has a few oddities with caching.

Failing that you could attach a file structure containing the html and .swf and .xml and.fla for me to test.

I have Flash CS4 if the .fla file needs tweaking.

Ciao.

Edited by Member #46692 because: n/a
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