June 21, 2001 - Detecting a Flash Movie's Progress

Yehuda Shiran June 21, 2001
Detecting a Flash Movie's Progress
Tips: June 2001

Yehuda Shiran, Ph.D.
Doc JavaScript

In some of your applications you may need to use Flash movies and JavaScript directly, without any prepackaged APIs such as FlashSound JavaScript API. You will enjoy more features, methods, and properties, but you'll have to take care of all the tiny details that are taken for granted when using FlashSound API, for example.

One of the "tiny" details is embedding the Flash object. The JavaScript file flashcheck2.js does exactly this, as well as other stuff. For example, it checks whether a Flash player exists (Flash plug-in or ActiveX control), and whether its version is higher than the minimum required by the application.

Use the TGetProperty() Flash method to get attributes of the Flash movie. One of the properties is CURRENT FRAME. You may get this property, but you cannot set it. The CURRENT FRAME property designates the current frame of the movie. You can get Flash properties by their sequence numbers. You get a property like this:

  mySwf.TGetProperty(timeline, propertyNumber);
The CURRENT FRAME property is no. 4, so you get its value by going:

  mySwf.TGetProperty(timeline, 4);
Play the following movie by clicking the Play link. Get the CURRENT FRAME of the movie by clicking the Get CURRENT FRAME link:

Rewind | Play | Get CURRENT FRAME

Here is the source code:

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript" SRC="flashcheck2.js"></SCRIPT>
<A href="javascript://" onclick="javascript:mySwf2.Rewind(); return false">Rewind</A> | 
<A href="javascript://" onclick="javascript:mySwf2.Play(); return false">Play</A> | 
<A href="javascript://" onclick="javascript:alert(mySwf2.TGetProperty('/', 4)); return false">Get CURRENT FRAME</A>
<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">
  var mySwf2 = Flash_embedSWF("opener.swf", "opener");
</SCRIPT>