Comments on: SWFObject – Flashvars Instead of External XML Files

By: new coder

new coder — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 21:24:27 +0000

Andrew Knapp it didn’t work. I have been searching for a way to use an xml file for 2 days now. Anyone has any ideas?

swfobject.embedSWF(“app_themes/theme1/usa_locator_demo.swf”, “myContent”, “530″, “410″, “6″, false, { xmlFile:”app_themes/theme1/usa_locator.xml”}

By: Rareview

Rareview — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 15:44:32 +0000

Doofus, I seriously doubt that Flash is going to be dead next year. However, I do think you’re correct that the complications Flash presents for developers, mobile devices, and search engines has steered people towards things like jQuery. But it still has it’s place – with video, audio, and complex animation. For example, we just finished a huge Flash animated family tree and that couldn’t have been done in any other way as effectively as it was done in Flash. In general though, we are definitely working a lot more with Javascript (jQuery) and CSS over Flash, which does seem to be the future.

By: doofus

doofus — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 05:02:56 +0000

Flash is old. Its not going to be around next year

By: Tom H

Tom H — Fri, 08 May 2009 02:19:35 +0000

Here’s a concept for you, seeing as any content loaded into Flash should really be accessible without it (for Google, those who don’t have Flash, mobile phones…), why not load the XHTML document itself into Flash and parse out the information you need (consider using a specific ID to wrap it like #flash-content)

By: Andrew Knapp

Andrew Knapp — Thu, 07 May 2009 22:08:34 +0000

Hey Dan,

I think what you’d want to do is send the name of the .xml file as a flashvar (ie. var flashvars = {xmlFile: “myxmlfile.xml”};

Once you have that imported into flash then you can use it like a normal .xml file and decompile it like that. We’ve used this a few times where we had the same .swf repeated, and needed the data inside of it to be changed, however there was too much data to send as all flashVars.

Good luck!

aok

By: dan

dan — Thu, 07 May 2009 21:30:49 +0000

might be a dumb question…but what would i do if i wanted to pass the xml doc itself into the flashvars parameter? i.e.

here is the xml doc…

Advance to the next level:

Take control of your content, empower business users, build an online community, easily integrate Web 2.0 tools and more!

dan

By: Rareview

Rareview — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:04:08 +0000

Kyle,

That’s a great suggestion. Of course XML files have their place and we’ll continue to use them, but when only a small amount is text is required, we really like Flashvars.

I like the suggestion here and we will try it next time we use XML. Thanks!

By: Kyle

Kyle — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:00:59 +0000

Hey guys,

Good post, however, I have a solution to the XML caching problem that I’ve used on all my websites. You can append the xml file name your loading with a cache buster, or unique identifier, which forces flash to load the most recent version. This could be a random number or the current time and date. Works like a charm

I really like the flashvars though for small lines of text or other variable that indicate what page your on if your using a single flash file for a menu or something.

Cheers!
k