Have a HTML page play Flash movie only once (not when revisited...)

Question

Hi guys,

How would it be possible to have a HTML page play a flash animation only once, i.e. when a person goes back to that page, the Flash won't play again from the start but will just show the last frame of the animation (or even a simple .jpg image of that last frame)? Is it even possible?

Thanks, L.

Answer 1

you could save a cookie the first time the user visits to show that the user has visited before. (http://plugins.jquery.com/project/Cookie)

Then when they return pass that value to the flash (using flashvars) so it knows only to play the last frame. (http://bowievanling.com/blog/using-flashvars-with-swfobject-20-and-as3/)

Using swfObject to embed your flash:

<script type="text/javascript">

var flashvars = {
  iscookie: "true"
};
var params = {
  menu: "false"
};
var attributes = { };

swfobject.embedSWF("myContent.swf", "myContent", "300", "120", "9.0.0","expressInstall.swf", flashvars, params, attributes);

</script>

in AS3 to load frameNumber if flashvar iscookie = true:

for (var fv in root.loaderInfo.parameters) {
   if(fv == 'iscookie'){
      if(root.loaderInfo.parameters[fv] == 'true'){
         gotoAndStop(frameNumber);
      }
   }
}

Josh

Answer 2

Alternativly to normal cookies, you could use Flash SharedObject. It pretty much like a normal cookie, but you access them via ActionScript, so it might be easier if are authoring the Flash movie yourself. You just save a simple boolean, and then the Flash movie can see it the next time it opens and will know just to display the end frame.

You can read about them here: http://livedocs.adobe.com/flash/9.0/ActionScriptLangRefV3/flash/net/SharedObject.html