What's browser support like for bare SWF files? - actionscript

Does anybody use bare .SWF files as webpages?
I know it's possible; it seems to work fine for me.
Why would I embed a SWF inside an HTML page if it's just going to be full screen (I mean the size of the browser's normal viewable page area, not COMPLETELY fullscreen)?
Is there a lack of browser support?
Or is this functionality determined by the browser's Flash plugin?

If you embed it in html page and the client doesn't have the flash plugin, most browsers show a missing plugin message. If u directly host the swf, a plugin-less browser might consider it as a download link and try to download the swf into the client machine instead of showing the missing plugin message.

My opinion is that if the browser has the Flash plugin it will render it, and it's up to you to implement how the swf behaves when you scale/resize the browser window/etc.
You can embed a swf in an HTML page and have it full browser screen offcourse, and you could interact with the browser a bit better ( some nice javascript/flash action going on ), not mention it would be more SEO/standards friendly.
I would recommend using SWFObject. Have a look at the fullpage demo.

Related

How to stop automatic download on IE 11 while using iframe

I have given a source in a Iframe tag, my is issue is that when the page loads on IE the download begins automatically and it generally happens on IE installed on windows 8.
<div> <iframe src="../../Images/Sample.pdf" width="800px" height="800px" ></iframe> </div>
It's downloaded probably because there is not Adobe Reader plug-in
installed. In this case IE (it doesn't matter which version) doesn't
know how to render it and it'll simply download file (Chrome, for
example, has its own embedded PDF renderer).
That said. is not best way to display a PDF (do not forget
compatibility with mobile browsers, for example Safari). Some browsers
will always open that file inside an external application (or in
another browser window). Best and most compatible way I found is a
little bit tricky but works on all browsers I tried (even pretty
outdated):
Keep your but do not display a PDF inside it, it'll be filled
with an HTML page that consists of an tag. Create an HTML
wrapping page for your PDF, it should look like this:
<html>
<body>
<object data="your_url_to_pdf" type="application/pdf">
<embed src="your_url_to_pdf" type="application/pdf" />
</object>
</body>
</html>
Of course you still need the appropriate plug-in installed in the
browser. Also take a look to this post if you need to support Safari
on mobile devices.
1st. Why nesting inside ? You'll find answer here on
SO. Instead of nested tag you may even provide a custom
message for your users (or a built-in viewer, see next paragraph).
2nd. Why an HTML page? So you can provide a fallback if PDF viewer
isn't supported. Internal viewer, plain HTML error messages/options
and so on...
It's tricky to check PDF support so you may provide an alternate
viewer for your customers, take a look to PDF.JS project, it's pretty
good but rendering quality - for desktop browsers - isn't as good as a
native PDF renderer (I didn't see any difference in mobile browsers
because of screen size, I suppose).
See also: HTML embedded PDF iframe

HTML link to specific pages in PDF

I have looked around the web and have found that appending #page=?? to the end of a PDF link will automatically take the visitor to that specific page in the PDF file.
I was wondering if this is still best practice as it doesn't seem to be working for me (Chrome on Windows 7). Also, all the articles I have found so far date back to 2006-2008, have things changed recently?
This is still valid code but it may require that some version of Acrobat (Reader, Pro, etc) be installed as a plugin on the browser in order for it to work as expected. Since multiple commonly-used browsers now have a built-in reader (Chrome, Safari for iOS are the big two that come to mind) support for direct page linking is somewhat spotty now. You can still do it...the worst case scenario is that the PDF just opens to the first page for those users but I would advise to just leave off the direct page link. If the page is that important, extract it to a separate PDF and link to that.

How to get Back button working between remote and local jQuery Mobile pages?

I have a local jQuery Mobile project going (inside PhoneGap, thus file:// protocol) where I sometimes need to fetch external pages (using http://) from a server where the content too are jQM pages with almost identical markup (except for the content, which is generated from a CMS).
Setting $.mobile.allowCrossDomainPages to true gives me the page, and that is all right. Going Back, however, fails. I get stuck in a place where /www/index.html is not found on the server (like, doh, of course..). Is there a way to "remember" where I came from, taking me back to the local html page I originally came from?
We just added a docs page on PhoneGap in jQuery Mobile for RC3 that should help you out quite a bit:
http://jquerymobile.com/test/docs/pages/phonegap.html

Opening my JQTouch Iphone WebApp for the home icon, why every external link open in another safari window?

Using the JQTouch library, usely links like the following ... should open the new page in the SAME window. That works fine when I go to the site using Safari BUT when I launch the site from the home saved icon, it opens a fullscreen site and on the first link it opens a NEW Safari window. How can I make it stay in the same original fullscreen window?
You have to set the target to _webapp. E.g:
<li class="arrow">Some Page</li>
and then it will load on the same page.
You need to look into manifest files.
The manifest file declares what files (html, javascript, css, jpgs etc.) that the iPhone should cache in order to make a webapp work offline. A part of the manifest file is used to declare which URLs are OK to use when in full screen (webapp) mode.
Specifically look at NETWORK in manifest files.
Example:
NETWORK:
*
This should allow access to any URL you like, and stay in webapp mode.
Alternatively use target="_self" - I haven't seen target="_webapp" anywhere.
/Mogens
One solution I found here is to change the way you write your links for a mobile app. Rather than a href='link.url' you'd write a href="javascript.window.location.href='link.url'"
Dislaimer: I haven't personally tried this yet, so I can't guarantee it will work. But logically, it does make sense.
Using target="_webapp" works only if you remove the rel="external", you cannot have both.

Is there any way to embed a pdf file into an html5 page?

I want to have a web page coded with HTML5, and I want to be able to put a pdf file onto this page so you can view it without having to click on any links to download it separately. Anyone know how to do this?
I want it to keep the text, images, and layout of the pdf file also. If that weren't the case I would just use an image. Thanks!
Edit: This will be hopefully going onto the ipad. So it won't support adobe. I need to just find a way to somehow make the pdf file show up in an html5 page without using a viewer. I want to keep all of its layers. It doesn't have to stay a pdf file when its on the page, I just need to find a way to transfer all of those layers there without having to do this manually with divs for each image, paragraph, etc.
I don't think this is possible without using Flash. Instead, you might want to convert the PDF to a different format (HTML for example) that can be rendered by the browser. There are tools that can do this from the command line, so making a script to do it on your site won't be too difficult.
You can use the embed tag like this:
<embed src="/path/to/your/file.pdf" />
Maybe you could convert the pdf to images on the server and display the images instead of the original pdf. As far as i know, Apache pdfbox can be used to do such a convert.
A little bit late and maybe issuu is gonna fix it soon but for now you can embed with issuu.com using an iframe and your magazine address ending in ?mode=mobile. Tested in ipad:
<iframe width="850px" height="580px" src="http://www.issuu.com/your_username/docs/your_magazine_name?mode=mobile" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
I would like same mobile version loading in desktop so there is no advertising. If you know how to make the browser to think it's an ipad let me know.
This code would directly embed a pdf viewer in a webpage
<object data="path to pdf " type="application/pdf" width="100" height="100">
<p>Alternative text - include a link to the PDF!</p>
</object>
If you are using ASP.NET, this link may be of interest to you.
Browser Based PDF Viewing And Editing
Hosted entirely on your server,
activePDF Portal is an ASP.NET
WebControl that enables your users to
interactively view and modify PDF
documents from any source - adding
comments, form fields, bookmarks, and
more – directly from within a standard
web browser, without requiring any
client-side software such as Adobe
Reader or Flash, or the use of ActiveX
controls.
- http://portal.activepdf.com/
PDFObject looks promising, but it doesn't work on iPads at the moment.

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