[Mike Smith]

Why would the php file stop, unless it received a command to do so?

If you were to want it to stop, wouldn’t you have to set up a javascript onUnload event to call a (php or other serverside) script to send an appropriate command ..?

[Mike Smith]

I’d just add that it’s quite important to try to follow worldwide web consortium web standards, see https://validator.w3.org/

This will give your site a chance of appearing fairly consistently on varying browsers and operating systems. It will also be a start towards meeting accessibility requirements, so that users with screen readers or on specialist equipment can use your site.

At present this site fails with 269 errors – quite a large amount! Most of these will be easily fixed if you work your way through the validator’s error messages.

https://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200512/ten_reasons_to_learn_and_use_web_standards/
https://www.webstandards.org/learn/faq/
https://dustinbrewer.com/why-web-standards-are-important-in-web-design/

[Mike Smith]

Painter (once of Fractal Design, now I think owned by Corel) has some great tools to draw over photos, allowing and aiding various line and brush stroke styles.

It’s quite pricy, but from time to time they offer older versions free , I guess to promote the brand and in anticipation of a proportion of subsequent upgrades.

This link looks like it could be one of those offers – but I haven’t checked it out, and any free download invites care and attention.
https://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=Development/LexarPE4BundlePromo&lc=en

https://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/gb/en/Product/1166553885783#tabview=tab0

[Mike Smith]

Of course your monitor is decent and correctly set up, so if you printed out your graphic, video recorded it and imported as footage this effect does not appear …?

[Mike Smith]

It’s a tough one, when you just want to be able to show what you can do.

But by your description, you do not have rights to the finished show. Do you have other suitable samples you could use?

Otherwise, the “service industry” and “repurpose your project files with your own footage” comments both seem like good advice to me.

[Mike Smith]

Thanks, Fernando

[Mike Smith]

OK I should scrub that last post. There are sample sites with the modified swfobject javascript file which load fine in IE8. Haven’t been able to isolate whatever it is about the magda page which is causing IE 8 trouble …

[Mike Smith]

Hi Charlotte

It does look like a problem in IE8. It’s not a Flash issue – you will be fine using Flash 8 created videos.

It looks like there may be an issue with how how Flash is embedded in IE 8 using the swfobject_modified.js file that I think Dreamweaver created for you.

It may be that Adobe will have to fix this as IE slowly spreads, or that Microsoft may do something.

Until one of those things happens, it might be worth your experimenting with other ways to embed your Flash file. On possible starting place is https://code.google.com/p/swfobject/

There’s a quick IE only browser renderer at https://ipinfo.info/netrenderer/

All best

Mike

[Mike Smith]

Hi Charlotte

Glad it’s working out.

Just for info, it all works fine in IE 6 on WinME here, and it’s very hard to get IE6 on XP any more – any XP security updating will replace it with IE7.

https://flash-mp3-player.net/ looks like a decent set of free, open source Flash mp3 players.

Skins – does the On2 player not allow customisation? It might be worth e-mailing their customer support to tell them what you want – they might have a fix. Otherwise, there are quite a few free Flash players around.

Flowplayer seems quite good at a quick glance – https://flowplayer.org/
And it seems quite configurable – there’s an example config with no audio controls at https://flowplayer.org/demos/skinning/skin-examples.html
which shows both how it will look and also the config code to get that look … there some more config detail at https://flowplayer.org/documentation/configuration/plugins.html#display-properties

If none of this is working out for you do report back. I’ve been working on and off on building Flash players to use, eventually, on my own site.

Btw, love the art.

Those women from the 60s that kept you sane – great stuff. Once stumbled upon a “happy disturbed women’s choir” in Amsterdam, a long time ago – quite an experience.

[Mike Smith]

OK now I know a bit more about what you’re after.

Do you need Flash? Well, there are reported to be good free or cheap flv encoders around, and there are decent free player too, including https://www.longtailvideo.com/players/jw-flv-player/
It might help to restrict your data rate, and perhaps to opt for the VP6 codec which gives decent quality but still plays smooth on slower computers.

But if you’re doing a lot of Flash for the web, buying and learning Flash will be useful. There’s quite a lot to learn, though, and it’s quite “technical” – allow yourself a little learning time.

If you’re managing without Dreamweaver now (lots of people are) then there’s no need for you to buy it.

Streaming – much low-volume video works fine in “progressive download”, which is easy and cheap to deploy, can work on pretty well all web hosts and browsers. It’s the way to start, and can give a good user experience. If you feel you want “streaming”, probably your best bet is to find and use a web host or service provider that has Flash Media Server and offers the service – but I’d recommend getting to grips with and trying out the easier route first and see if it works for you and your users. It probably will.

That particular IE “bug” from a couple of years back was the result of a patent dispute which has now gone away. For a while, Microsoft made its browsers so any ActiveX content had to be accepted / clicked as OK to play by the user, in light of court action from Eolas. That has all been resolved.

The issue of how best to put (Flash or) Quicktime into a webpage without breaking web standards remains is tricky.

The ways recommended by both Apple and Adobe are both reported to result in code that breaks w3c compliance, which of course is bad – Disability Discrimination Act bad. Though they both largely work.

The issues are widely attributed to the non-standards-compliant way that successive versions of IE are alleged to have ignored web standards, and how others have reacted to the resulting problems. But there are also published solutions.

There are a lot of articles around on standards compliant embedding of QT – if you started a new thread here on that subject you’d probably get a lot of advice.

Once you’ve found either a bunch of html or a Javascript source that you like and can use, you’ll be OK.

There’s no need to get hung up on Javascript if you don’t know it / like it / use it – you can do this in pure html.

Javascript solutions can be neat, but do exclude users with Js turned off or with browsers that don’t support it.

You could try starting with one of these …

https://realdev1.realise.com/rossa/rendertest/quicktime.html
https://www.alistapart.com/articles/byebyeembed/
https://blog.deconcept.com/2005/01/26/web-standards-compliant-javascript-quicktime-detect-and-embed/