Xara Flash Animation will not play in Apache

Dear All,

I am new to Xara and going through the initial learning curve. Unusually, thus far, this has been a rewarding and enjoyable process.

So please excuse me if my question is ridiculously obvious to all you old hands.

I have reviewed the Xara documentation, the web and several postings on these forums including dcahall's posting of a similar title.

Unfortunately I cannot find a straight forward set of instructions on how to get apache to play .swf files from the localhost.

Regards

JohnMike

p:s: Obviously the files have been tested outside apache and work fine.

Hello JohnMike,

Welcome to Talkgraphics.

Please post a link so we can see the page on the Apache server.

Hi Soquili,

I hope that I am adding this link correctly.

http://localhost/Website/1%20-%20HomePage/index.html

Regards

Unfortunately a link to your local hard drive will not work over the internet.

I thought you may have it available on an internet site.

Sorry no I have not attempted to move this to the hosting site yet. I was being daft obviously the localhost link will only work for me. I do not know whether it will help but when I right clink over the space where the animation should be playing a message comes up - movie not loaded and about adobe flash player 9. When I select the latter I am informed that the player is successfully installed.

Regards

JohnMike

Can you provide the exact text of the information you see when you right click the placeholder?

The problem is not with Xara software itself but something to do with Apache and Adobe. Most likely a permissions issue. Not much I can do but try and help interpret the error message.

Movie not loaded....
----------------------------------
About Adobe Flash Player 9 ....

Check your Apache control panel and look to see if .swf files are allowed to be loaded.

I have not used Apache for several years so I do not recall the exact terminology used.

It may be under mime types.

The path to the flash files could very well be incorrect causing the movie not to be loaded. Might want to verify the paths.

Soquili and ckh many many thanks for your input the penny has dropped and I have wonderful Xara graphics in my test site.

It was the comment on paths.

You may think me a muppet but I have been using filename#1.swf filename#2.swf etc to keep track of the various versions of my Xara graphics I have been creating.

For reasons that I do not yet understand when the # is part of the file path inside apache the embedded file cannot be found.

I have renamed all the files and replaced all the references in the code and hey presto we have graphics!:D

It's always good practice not to put spaces or certain special characters in file names. There's a couple ways of naming files that make them readable. You can use camelhumping:

myFileName.html

or you can use underscores(_) or dashes (-)

my_file_name.html
my-file-name.html

The # (octothorp) character is not allowed in filenames, it is treated as a special character.

Sometimes the # indicates that the remainder of the line is a comment and is to be ignored.

Never knew that was called an octothrop Bill, I've always called it a "hash".

Very often different programming languages use different syntax, which leads to BIG problems.

You've helped me previously on such problems, which has made scripting much simpiler. e.g. Flash action scripts "+" compared to Perl's "."

Sometimes it is also called "sharp" and "number". In some programming languages it may be called the way it's used, for example "literal". :D

Sometimes it is called pound, i'm not sure why but I have heard it referred to that way. :D