Getting different Flash galleries to display depending on what link is clicked.
by Matt Barlow
on
Nov 20, 2008 at 3:17:28 pm
Hello,
I am making this website of mine, which is a challenge for me as I am in no way a web designer or programmer and am just learning it as I go along, but am quite pleased with what I have managed to accomplish so far!
I am stuck at one crucial but hopefully final stage though...
Basically, I have a sidebar on the left which is a container for a Collapsible Panel of links for photographic galleries which I've made using a Flash template called Simpleviewer (I have no clue with Flash at all, so that was my only option!!).
Now, the Flash gallery opens up in the main area of the window, to the right of that sidebar and is within a "flashContent" container, which links to the "Viewer.swf" file, which is the gallery.
What I need to do is tell this flashContainer to link to a different flash gallery depending on which gallery link is clicked on in the sidebar, and I cannot work out how to do this.
I think it's like something we used to do in Frames years ago, which are apparently a Bad Thing nowdays, so I'm sure there must be a way of saying to it "if Egypt is clicked on, then open the Egypt gallery in the flashContainer" etc....
If anyone can give me some guidance on how to do this, I'd be extremely grateful, and if you like, I can send you the code or a link to my test-URL of the page in a private message.
Re: Getting different Flash galleries to display depending on what link is clicked. by Richard Williams on Nov 20, 2008 at 5:57:09 pm
Hi Matt...
What is the problem with putting a linik up on this page to your test URL? Go ahead and put a link up and we can take a look aand sort it out for you...
Re: Getting different Flash galleries to display depending on what link is clicked. by Matt Barlow on Nov 20, 2008 at 6:52:23 pm
Hi Richard,
Thanks for the reply.
I will put a link up then, so you can see what I'm on about - I was just a little shy about doing so as I'm not a web-designer and didn't want people criticizing the design etc!
It only has stupid holiday snaps in the gallery at the moment, as I haven't put the actual photog galleries in yet, and the links don't work - they're only there to test the layout and the collapsible panel functionality at the moment.
So, as I hope you can see, I just need a way of telling it that if I click "Egypt", the gallery on the right changes to the Egypt gallery, and then if I click on Life or Things or Contact (outsdie the collapsible panel of Places), the Panel with collapse and the relevant gallery will display on the right.
I have thought about doing it by having every gallery on its own page, with the link-menu on the left the same on every page except for each link being highlighted depending on what the gallery is, but this will mean the collapsible panel won't really have full functionality then, as it'll open smoothly but then a link outside of it is clicked, it will just go to a page where the panel is closed, so will look very sudden and not very elegant, so I was trying to do it in a way that preserved the open/close motion of the sidebar panel.
Also, I thought doing each gallery on a different page might be quite an inefficient way of doing and thought there must just be a simple way of telling the 'flashcontent' container to just point to a different .swf file for each link clicked.
Re: Getting different Flash galleries to display depending on what link is clicked. by Matt Barlow on Nov 20, 2008 at 8:10:16 pm
Hi Richard,
How do I upload the .fla on here??
I don't have an .fla in any of the files actually in my site - the .fla I have is only the Simpleviewer one that publishes the .swf file which the Simpleviewer Photoshop plugin uses to generate the galleries.
Is that what you need though?
If you can tell me how to upload it, I'll do that then.
Re: Getting different Flash galleries to display depending on what link is clicked. by Richard Williams on Nov 20, 2008 at 10:38:04 pm
ok,
So if i am getting you right, then as it stands currently, your site loads a file called viewer.swf, and what you want it to do is load different swf's depending on the button you click on... so viewer.swf will change to bali.swf or egypt.swf. Is that right? if so, then i am sure we can do something around this, although i still actually think that you are attacking the problem in the wrong way. Let me know if i am right about what you are trying to achieve and we can help...
Also, i have some tips for you...
I would go into the CSS and add a property to the sidebar which is cursor = pointer (written simply as cursor: pointer;if you put it in the code area)
this will give it the pointer hand when selecting the drop down list.
Re: Getting different Flash galleries to display depending on what link is clicked. by Matt Barlow on Nov 21, 2008 at 12:42:42 am
Hi Richard,
Yes, that is exactly what I want to do, indeed.
I want the gallery (Flash movie) which at the moment is viewer.swf to be whatever gallery relates to the link clicked in the sidebar, so clicking on 'bali' would replace the gallery that's currently showing with the bali gallery, and so on. Absolutely.
I'm surprised it's such a difficult thing to accomplish actually, being not very knowledgeable about these things!
I thought there'd just be some way of saying "if 'bali' is clicked, display bali.swf in flashcontent container" but apparently it's not that simple!
I'll have a look at the cursor thing, yes. I did look at them briefly but the other issues overtook me a bit!
If you have any guidance or advice then, do please let me know.
Alternatively, I might just settle for every gallery being on its own page with common elements remaining the same, and all pages linking to each other, but having cracked all sorts of problems and technicalities with that Collapsible Panel, I am very pleased with that and really like the effect so want to keep it!
Someone on another forum suggested iFrames are what I need, which are apparently something different from evil old Framesets, but I've never heard of these. Any opinion on this?
Again, thanks for your responses and I hope we can find a solution to this surprisingly difficult problem!
Re: Getting different Flash galleries to display depending on what link is clicked. by Richard Williams on Nov 21, 2008 at 12:09:45 pm
ordinarily you are right, but because this is a third party flash application its not quite as simple as it should be. Probably beacause if you want these extra options, you aught to pay them for it.... Having only just realised this, i think i aught not edit the coding for it as it is largly someone elses work.
To be perfectly honest with you, i think you are using the wrong thing for what you are trying to achieve and if it were me, i would do the exact same look on my site but use spry instead of flash, that was it would be so much easier to manage and add new galleries etc. I know that may sound a bit daunting but it is all pretty straight forward and easy to follow, http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/spry/demos/gallery/index.html
The second link is a tutorial... The more you do for yourself the more chance you will then get to learn little bits around what you are doing to then enambe you to personalise it.
Re: Getting different Flash galleries to display depending on what link is clicked. by Matt Barlow on Nov 21, 2008 at 2:49:11 pm
Hi Richard,
Thanks for getting back to me.
That Spry solution does look interesting! I didn't even know about Spry until I started experimenting with Collapsible Panels and the Accordion (which just kept going wrong all the time....), so I used Simpleviewer to make my galleries, which I did pay for, having used the free version previously for a simple holiday-snaps gallery I did.
I'm still surprised though that there is no way of just telling Dreamweaver: "if bali is clicked, then display bali.swf"... Seems like it should be a very simple thing to me, but then I don't know DW as well as you!
Curiously, I was playing with iFrames last night, which are new to me, but that does seem to be a way of acheiving what I want, although I haven't gone into it completely yet.
Do you have any opinions on those?
This page looks the same as the older link I gave you, to my test page, but this one uses an iFrame, rather than a flashcontent container to display the Flash gallery, which you can apparently swap easily with another flash gallery depending on the link clicked:
Re: Getting different Flash galleries to display depending on what link is clicked. by Richard Williams on Nov 21, 2008 at 7:22:40 pm
Hi Matt...
Its not that you can't do it, its that you can't easily do it with the way the viewer.swf is embedded into the screen
If change you page in such a way that you embed the .swf into the area where it is in dreamweaver, then we can do something quite easily by telling it to embed different swf's depending on whats clicked.
What i suggest you do is create a new page, and copy the various differnt aspects of it into a table in the new page, such as the spry collapsible pannel etc. then, merge all the cells on the right hand side of your table to create one big box on the right hand side... embed the swf into that part of the table.
If you can get it like that, so the whole thing is a little more "yours" then we can set the buttons on the collapsible pannel to display different swf's by changing the embed file name.
i know it seems like this is a bit of mucking around, but it is the only thing we can do really without stepping on anyones toes.
If you would like to zip up your site folders, and upload the zipped file onto your server and post a link to them, i will download them and try to put something together for you if you like, but at the same time, there is no harm in your trying to get somewhere with it as frustrations learnt now will only server to help you in the future.
Go to code view... highlight all, then select paste.
Press refresh.
If you highlight button1, then click on behaviors
You can see then what i did... i added a behavior that sets the text in the code. this is how i would do it if it was all laid out in a table.
Hope this helps, good luck with it. If you understand it, it may well allow you to actually make the same changes to your origionally posted page... look out for container div "flash content"
Go to code view... highlight all, then select paste.
Press refresh.
If you highlight button1, then click on behaviors
You can see then what i did... i added a behavior that sets the text in the code. this is how i would do it if it was all laid out in a table.
Hope this helps, good luck with it. If you understand it, it may well allow you to actually make the same changes to your origionally posted page... look out for container div "flash content"
