[thelist] Flash Error - XML Not Successfully Loaded - insanity

[Ian Anderson]

Rich Points wrote:

>
> Anyway here is a page that works sometimes...do you see a Flash 
> navigation?  http://floodsafety.com/test/texas/index.html
>
> Why is this happening?
>
> Thanks
> Rich

Hi Rich,

the issue is sometimes to do with network latency - basically, it takes 
a few milliseconds for the file to load off your disk, and maybe one or 
two seconds for the data to load into the browser when the flash file is 
viewed from off the server. If the timeline is playing, (depending on 
frame rate set) it may have just one twelfth of a second to load the 
data, which is why it may work locally but not remotely.

The flash downloads first, then the request for the data is sent back to 
the server, and the Flash playhead may have moved on to another frame by 
the time the data returns - too late. It all depends how the Flash movie 
is structured and how the actionscript is written.

The developer should be pausing the timeline while the data has loaded 
and then once it has loaded move the playhead onto the relevant frame 
where the nav is displayed. There are good code samples on the 
Macromedia site and elsewhere, that show how to do this, including some 
neat stuff with callback functions.

Without seeing the original FLA, who knows, but the sort of thing you're 
describing where it works locally but not on the server is classic of 
this sort of issue.

You could post some of the actionscript, assuming you can find it in the 
timeline - if you didn't author it, it's like looking for the proverbial 
needle in a haystack. Or upload the fla somewhere so we can get it to 
take a look.

Hope this helps

Cheers

Ian