Flash Movies with a Trasparent Background that work in PowerPoint?

**Anders 205** · 25 February 2007, 05:05 PM

Transparent SWF objects in PowerPoint!

Hi John, and you other Flash cats! I have experimented a bit with having transparent SWF objects in PowerPoint. I have put a little something together for simple demo purpose.

This PowerPoint Show demo, attached, is rendering a HTML embedded SWF object with transparent background. The SWF object contains exclusively vector text shapes without background and is rendered on top of a bitmapped image.

The HTML can be placed locally for off-line presentations or server-side located for on-line presentations. In the demo the HTML is ftp'd to the server to avoid attaching all containing files in this thread. You can open the source to see the coding (it's IE6 optimized) by right-clicking the HTML file (outside the SWF object) and select "View Source".

I will intend to streamline the coding/scripting for exclusive PowerPoint usage. The result is anyhow that, for sure, transparent SWF objetcs can play in PowerPoint Show off-line and on-line! With a HTML workaround.

Have fun! Cheers, Anders
(Uh-oh! The .pps file will not attach in this thread!)
I will try to url it here:
SWFTransparencyHTMLRemote.pps
It's available. Right-click and select "Save Target As..." to your HD and play the .pps in your PowerPoint Viewer.

**Xhris** · 19 March 2007, 01:48 AM

Originally Posted by Anders 205

Transparent SWF objects in PowerPoint!

Hi John, and you other Flash cats! I have experimented a bit with having transparent SWF objects in PowerPoint. I have put a little something together for simple demo purpose.

This PowerPoint Show demo, attached, is rendering a HTML embedded SWF object with transparent background. The SWF object contains exclusively vector text shapes without background and is rendered on top of a bitmapped image.

The HTML can be placed locally for off-line presentations or server-side located for on-line presentations. In the demo the HTML is ftp'd to the server to avoid attaching all containing files in this thread. You can open the source to see the coding (it's IE6 optimized) by right-clicking the HTML file (outside the SWF object) and select "View Source".

I will intend to streamline the coding/scripting for exclusive PowerPoint usage. The result is anyhow that, for sure, transparent SWF objetcs can play in PowerPoint Show off-line and on-line! With a HTML workaround.

Have fun! Cheers, Anders
(Uh-oh! The .pps file will not attach in this thread!)
I will try to url it here:
SWFTransparencyHTMLRemote.pps
It's available. Right-click and select "Save Target As..." to your HD and play the .pps in your PowerPoint Viewer.

Unfortunately, the pps file shows nothing of value on the second page (just a white background with orange horizontal stripes across the top and bottom). Please could you be more specific (e.g. provide a step-by-step recipe) for allowing the html transparent swf workaround?

**Anders 205** · 23 March 2007, 08:41 AM

Please excuse me, Xhris, for not being able to respond to your queries earlier. To proceed I need to ask you a couple of questions about your resources available.

1. Which is your standard browser? (The demo html setup is optimized for IE6+.)
2. Is "Allow ActiveX content to run on this computer" enabled in your Advanced IE settings?
3. Is "Run ActiveX controls and plugin programs" enabled in your IE Security settings?
4. Is "Run scripts on ActiveX controls" enabled in your IE Security settings?
5. Is "Allow windows to display by script without restrictions" in your IE Security settings?

Anders

**Xhris** · 23 March 2007, 01:39 PM

Originally Posted by Anders 205

Please excuse me, Xhris, for not being able to respond to your queries earlier. To proceed I need to ask you a couple of questions about your resources available.

1. Which is your standard browser? (The demo html setup is optimized for IE6+.)
2. Is "Allow ActiveX content to run on this computer" enabled in your Advanced IE settings?
3. Is "Run ActiveX controls and plugin programs" enabled in your IE Security settings?
4. Is "Run scripts on ActiveX controls" enabled in your IE Security settings?
5. Is "Allow windows to display by script without restrictions" in your IE Security settings?

Anders

1. I use Firefox mainly, but occasionally IE7
2-5. Yes as far as I can tell.

thanks

**Anders 205** · 26 March 2007, 09:59 AM

Good morning, Xhris! In this sample the html is Win IE6+ coded and will display in PowerPoint viewer correctly, provided that your PP is accepting html page display, which it normally does, and all IE browser settings are Ok for the purpose. So happens at my end and I have checked it with another user. In Firefox the html will display, but not correctly positioned due to conventional MS CSS element positioning used in this very sample.

May I suggest that you go through your IE settings one more time? When the html page will display correctly in PP the IE browser is well set.
Have a pleasant day.

Anders.

**Xhris** · 10 April 2007, 11:16 PM

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