[thelist] Ideas

Tue Jul 12 03:51:39 CDT 2005

> We created a
> simple flash splash screen which showed a book having it's front cover
> ripping away, and then redirecting to the HTML site, however they're not
> happy with that. 

Just to agree on the concept: Are they not happy with the redirect, or
redirect is okay but they are not happy with the non-flash content? I
think they don't like
the redirect and loading of the new page plus staring at the blank white screen
for a few seconds during the transition.

> My only thought at the moment is to have a pure Flash
> presentation layer created which will use the CMS produced XML to
> display the site.  However I'm not certain how well Flash will display
> HTML markup?

AFAIK, flash is not very good (even you may say poor) at displaying HTML markup.

> I did think about having an iFrame hidden beneath a flash object, which
> would then be made visible using javascript, but I didn't know how well
> this would work.

This may lead to synchronization problems to solve. What if flash
loads but iframe has not finished loading yet and the user waits for
the iframe to load. You need to listen to the iframe's onload,
onreadystate whatsoever.

If I got you correct you use some sort of XSL Transformation to turn
your XML to HTML markup. If that't the case here is my solution:

<html>
<head>
<script type="text/javascript" src="page.js"></script>
</head>
<body>
    <div id="EmbeddedFlashObject">
      ... flash intro goes here.
    </div>
    <div id="PageContent" style="display:none">
    ... the rest of the page goes here.
    </div>
</body>
</html>

___ page.js ___
var g_blnPageLoaded = false;
window.onload = function() {
  g_blnPageLoaded = true;
};
function revealPage() {
  if(!g_blnPageLoaded) {
    setTimeout("revealPage()",500);
  }   

  document.getElementById("EmbeddedFlashObject").style.display = "none";
  document.getElementById("PageContent").style.display = "block";
}

___

The revealPage method may be called from the flash object after the intro 
ends.

Actually, after re-thinking guess it may be adjusted for the IFRAME
case as well.
But a non-frame solution would be my preference whenever possible.
(frames are yet another concept that I say "No! Hell no!".)

Plus, I did not consider the noscript case. If js is not available the
same content
should be provided to the user with a hyperlink and an explanatory message.

HTH,
Volkan.