Flash Without a SWF File?

Question

Is there any way to embed Flash completely in HTML, without reference to an external SWF file? I ask because I would like to send an HTML file as an email attachment that the recipient will open in a browser and fill out as a form. The last step is that they will copy the result to their clipboard, paste it into a new message, and email it back. I cannot reliably copy to the clipboard with JavaScript because of the security issues, but there are simple Flash apps to add that capability.

I know I could just display the response text (which will be Base64 encoded) to the recipient and have them copy/paste, but it would be nice to provide this small convenience to them.

Also, so you are aware, the text is often too large to include in an email using mailto.

Yes. This needs to be done via email. The users have slow, occasional satellite email access and no other data connection to the interwebs. To make things worse, I cannot make them install anything. It is a difficult situation.

Answer 1

You could always send them a PDF instead, since PDFs support interactive forms. You'd need one copy of Acrobat (or a similar tool, there are alternatives out there) and your users need free copies of Acrobat Reader. Results can be sent back as a PDF or in XML form for processing. PDF form validation is pretty advanced and can include Javascript.

Answer 2

You could try encoding the SWF in a data: URL.

Answer 3

Even if you did embed the .swf in the email as a MIME attachment or in a data url, there doesn't seem to be any way to tell the player to load the movie from that data url, e.g:

<object .....>
    <param name="movie" value="cid:TheEmbeddedSWFData" />

as you would with HTML emails with embedded images. As far as I can tell, the player expects to load the .swf using regular HTTP GET requests only. No "please send me the embedded data within email #632523462423 with CID of 'blahblahblah'".

What about compiling the .swf using Adobe Air or any of the .swf-to-.exe compilers?

That way you just attach the resulting executable, the client saves it to their machine, runs it, and the Flash application runs as a regular program, no browser required.

Answer 4

You cannot include Flash in emails. 90% of email systems will mark it as spam or strip it out.

Give me a link to the file or use a PDF as El Zorko said.