Flash Movies with a Trasparent Background that work in PowerPoint?

[Xhris]

Hi Anders,

Unfortunately, I still can't get it to work. I've attached an image of the half million options available to me in IE. Please could you help me identify which option(s) are not set correctly?

What is more important for me however, is to know a recipe for displaying a html file in PowerPoint. Is this something you could provide? (I'm not sure how ActiveX works, or whether it is even necessary; is this something you could also comment on?)

My ultimate objective is to be able to display a multi-level flash animation created in Xara (see my flash tutorial) in Powerpoint. Displaying such a file in a browser requires the relevant (level 0) html file to be opened in the browser. If in the process of learning h ow to do this I can also learn how to retain flash transparency, then I'll be double happy.

thanks

Xhris

[Xhris]

...My ultimate objective is to be able to display a multi-level flash animation created in Xara (see my flash tutorial) in Powerpoint...

Oh, this is actually easy enough; just put the level 0 flash file in PP as a SW object.

[Anders 205]

Hello Xhris! I have been long gone during a period abroad and I ask you to kindly excuse me for not attending this forum and your post until now.

You are asking about how to display/insert a html page i PowerPoint. It is quite an easy method and efficient after having the Shyam Pillai's LiveWeb add-in installed to PowerPoint. Will be added to the dropdown menu to just click insert "Web Page". Also recommended is the add-in FlashBack to automatically rewind Flash movies in PowerPoint. Please find the download page here:

Scroll down on the web page http://skp.mvps.org/download.htm to find

-- LiveWeb - add-in to insert web pages and update real-time i PowerPoint.
-- FlashBack - add-in to rewind Flash movies i PowerPoint automatically.

I have gone through your settings and some of your current settings are standing out being erroneous for your purposes and need to be adjusted.

Internet Options

Accessibility
check Reset text size to medium för new windows and tabs
uncheck Reset text to medium while zooming

Browsing
check Close unused folders in History and Favorites
check Disable script debugging (Other)
check Display a notification about every script error
check Notify when downloads complete
uncheck Reuse windows for launching shortcuts
uncheck Use passive FTP (for firewall and DSL modem compatibitlity

HTTP 1.1 settings
Are you really using proxy connections? If not, uncheck. If yes, keep checked

Security
check Allow active content from CDs to run on my computer
check Do not save encrypted pages to disk
check Empty Temporary Internet Files folder when browser is closed (Important! Always clean your TIF folder before closing your computer. Use the SuperCleaner app regularly. Highly recommended!)

Security Settings - Internet Zone

ActiveX controls and plug-ins
Disable Allow previously unused ActiveX controls
Disable Automatic prompting for ActiveX controls
Enable Display video and animation on a web page that... (here you have a major error in your current settings!)
Disable Initialize and script ActiveX controls not marked as safe for scripting

Miscellaneous
Enable Allow websites to open windows without address or status bar
Enable programs and files in an IFRAME

Scripting
Enable Allow status bar updates via script


And, finally and needless to say. You do have have latest updates to your OP and IE7 install, don't you? How about the latest version of Flash Player?

Good luck, Xhris! Please tell if your adjusted settings will display the html in PowerPoint as intended. I don't think you need further guidance with the coding and additonal remote scripting to the html in order to include the .swf with transparent bg because you do possess all the knowledge required to do so. If, however, by any chance, you need further assistance I will gladly be at your disposal to help you out to the best of my ability.

Cheers, Anders

[Xhris]

Hi Anders,

Thanks for the detailed response. After resetting the settings, your pps file wasn't working still. I installed the two recommended addins, and I realised that in PowerPoint, the tools-macro-security setting was set to high not medium and this was preventing the addins from working. After changing this, your pps worked.

The webpage addin allows quick insertion of any webpage (eg www.xara.com) into a PowerPoint presentation, which is very impressive. Am I right in thinking that you got the transparent flash working by loading it up via the webpage and not actually putting a flash object directly into PowerPoint? If so, I'm still not sure how you got the flash to be transparent. If you make a transparent flash file and load it via the webpage feature in powerpoint, is the transparency transferred through, unlike if you insert a shockwave flash object? If so, then would this mean I need to have the html file like those I talk about for layered flash files in my flash tutorial document (in my signature) locally on my computer to load in via the PowerPoint web addin? (These are rhetorical questions to be honest, as I'm short of time). I'll edit this post later if i get it to work with a clear and simple recipe of how to add transparent flash files to PowerPoint).

[Xhris]

Ok, I'm still missing something. In PowerPoint, I insert a webpage using the webpage insertion utility, and set the URL to the location of an html file on my computer which is made using the html code that Xara gives for the flash animation previews. The result is that the flash animation plays in the html object in PowerPoint. However, I'm still missing something; I can’t get the background of the html object to be transparent.

I think what would be helpful would be if you could post all the files you used to create your .pps file, so that I can construct it myself using the components. This will help me identify what is different in my approach.


edit:
I think after some further playing around that my expectations may be a bit high. I was expecting a solution where an object showing a swf (whether it be a SW flash object, or a html object loading a swf) would have a completely transparent background so that any other objects on the PowerPoint slide underneath would be visible. In other words, like having a transparent photo overlaid on top of another object, allowing the bottom object to be seen. Is this possible?

[Anders 205]

Dear Xhris! I was glad this morning reading your two latest posts telling that you finally made a home run displaying my html in your PowerPoint Viewer after tweaking your PP Editor.

Your queries and requests.
Q1: How to get the background transparent in the html?
Q2: How to render a transparent .swf in html on top of other objects in PowerPoint?
Q3: Can I have the files generating the html inserted in the .pps?

A1: First condition--The transparency mode is not supported in PowerPoint. Second condition--Inserting html with transparent mode .swf in PowerPoint is a work around and bypassing/overriding the PowerPoint transparency restriction. Transparency mode is coded in html object/embed parameters with "wmode=transparent". See source code in the html file. You have access to the html source directly from my .pps with the second page rendered. You rightclick on the yellow background not more and not less than 1 cm above the image and the SwfObject and select "show source" (do not rightclick on the image or on the SwfObject for the desired purpose!). Read in the source how the wmode parameters are written in two places (object and embed parameters).

A2: A html with .swf in transparent wmode is rendered on top of other objects in .pps. A html page can be body coded with transparent background (as for iFrames) but PowerPoint will not accept it. You simply insert the other objects in the html page instead of on the PowerPoint slide page background. Set the size of the html with css as a container with the SwfObject placed topmost to required size, also with css, in the html container. That is how my .pps sample with html page insertion is made. The html has a .jpg object and the text .swf rendered on top of it. You can, however, produce a html page with a SwfObject set to "exactFit" width and height, positioned with coordinates x=0px, y=0px, and reduce your html invisible page border to match the SwfObject exact size and move it to preferred placement on the PowerPont slide page. Doing that you will display a transparent mode .swf on top of other objects on the slide page.

A3: I will gladly hand over the requested files to you. There are two set of files. #1 The preload html files (which you do not need actually when loading a small amount of relatively low-weight files. It is the preload page you see initially when navigating to the second slide page in my .pps file. #2 When content is adequately loaded the preload page will redirect to the main html page, including the SwfObject, by script calling.

Rightclick on links below and select "Save Target As..." to download to you computer.

Preload html and content
PreNewShow10.htm
blue.gif
red.gif

Main html and content
NewShow10.htm
newshow10.css
groucho2.jpg
iefix.js
TxtNewShow10.swf

Comments to the files above:
--The head "NewShow" in the .swf file is vector produced in XtremePro, saved to .wmf format and imported to Swish. The rest of the text and red underlining is produced and animated in Swish together with the imported .wmf file, and finally saved as .swf to a predetermined width and height.

--The remotely placed iefix.js is required to render a SwfObject eliminating the "dreaded gray box" in IE6+.

--The stylesheet css is optimized for IE6+ and will not position objects correctly in Firefox (unfortunate for Firefox lovers!).

--Html pages and their content may be server-side located for on-line viewing and presentations, or placed client-side locally together with your .pps file for off-line auditorial in-house presentations.

--I produce html pages in Notepad exclusively and never use conventional webpage editors.

Enjoy experimenting! If anything unclear in the above, please don't hesitate to holler!

Cheers, Anders

[Xhris]

Hi Anders. Thanks again for the detailed reply. Last night I did what you recommend in A1-A2. I realised that while this allows a transparent flash object over a bitmap say, like in your demonstration, it's no different in practice (visual result) to just having the bitmap included in the flash file itself. What I was after was a flash-showing object that was flexible and transparent and could be used in conjunction (overlaid) with other all the other PowerPoint features. This isn't possible and appears to be a limitation of PowerPoint. I've realised that searching for workarounds to this by focusing on transparent swfs using a HTML object was a red herring. In other words, putting all objects in a HTML object on the slide isn't a work around, because that HTML object is itself not transparent and thus cannot be used in conjunction with underlying objects etc. in PowerPoint. This is a shame, but in terms of design, can be worked around to an extent to provide only minor limitations in what I would like to do in PP. One good thing I learned though is how to insert a webpage into a PP presentation.