How to put a .swf Flash video on individual product pages?

Hi all,

It took me some time to figure out how to put a small flash video on individual Product Pages and Category Pages. I'm posting this to help anybody with the same problem.

I tried doing this, http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=92931 but it was too complicated, I could not get it to work properly and you end up with a flash player box on every page, not just for specific pages. Rather try this:

FTP your .swf file to your images directory (in my case includes/languages/english/CUSTOM/Video/myvideo.swf)

In your Zencart Admin section go to: Admin>Catalog>Categories/Products

Edit the category or product you wish to have your flash video playing on.

In the Description Editor click the <> icon (toggle html source). Paste the following code:

<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="112" width="160" 

data="includes/languages/english/CUSTOM/Video/myvideo.swf"><param value="includes/languages/english/CUSTOM/Video/myvideo.swf" name="movie" />
<param value="high" name="quality" /><param value="#000000" name="BGCOLOR" />
<param value="false" name="menu" />
</object>

Remember to change the height and width to match your .swf video size. Also make sure you are pointing at the correct file.

Note: you are not replacing your product image with this, just adding a flash video.

I converted my .avi video files to .swf with Format Factory (free from https://www.downloads.com)

Hope this helps somebody!:cool:

Not wishing to rain on your parade, but I'm guessing that you haven't tested this is different browsers, especially IE6.

You aren't raining on my parade my friend! Yes I have tested and it works with IE6 and Firefox 2. What flaw do you see?:smile:

Tested it again on several pc's, and it works. Sorry Kuroi, I think you are just posting replies to get links to your site:smile:

Using the object tag alone will normally cause IE6 to pop a dialogue box asking whether the content should be displayed or saved. IE7 will normally blocked it with normal security settings but less intrusively .

I can't see anything in your code that would get around that. I wonder if you have your IE security settings set low.

Do you have a site where you have used tis code, that we could see.

Site is still in development, I want to add Magic url to change pagenames. If I post in here Google will crawl us, don't want that yet. Can I send you link via message?

Certainly

OK. There is a problem. But you may feel that you can live with it.

Back in April 2006, Microsoft deliberately inhibited the static loading of active content, including Flash, in Internet Explorer. This has an out and out pain as users would get alerts pop up to tell them that they needed to "click to activate" content that could be dangerous.

Many designers felt that people were as likely to click away. As a result alternative approaches were rapidly developed. Using javascript to do the loading proved foolproof (provided visitors had javascript enabled) and popular. Though the whole issue was a pain and didn't win Microsoft any friends in the web development community.

However, and this is the bit I didn't know when I posted above, Microsoft then licensed the technology they needed to re-enable automatic loading of Active content and from April 2008 started to roll it out in XP SP3 and Vista.

This means that most IE7 users and any IE6 users on XP SP3 (or Vista if there are any) shouldn't have a problem. IE6 users on XP SP2 or earlier (which is the state of my IE6 test machine) will still get the "click to activate" message. But the problem is much less widespread than my earlier posts suggested, and personally I wouldn't worry about it.

IE7 on XP SP2 still has the "click to activate this control" "feature" and needs the javascript swfobject or ac_fl_runcontent loaders...

kiddo:

IE7 on XP SP2 still has the "click to activate this control" "feature" and needs the javascript swfobject or ac_fl_runcontent loaders...So it went into the operating system part of the upgrade, rather than a tweak to the browser itself. Useful to know.

Conversely, I suspect that many of the corporates still using IE6 may not have a problem, by virtue of running versions before the April 2006 change, or even unaffected operating system (its surprising how many major companies have stuck with Windows 2000).

Thanks a lot Kuroi! And kiddo. So some older machines won't display it, and I wouldn't want to send anybody away from my site. Should you avoid Flash altogether then?

Is there a workaround for this that you know of? You mention doing it with Java? Or maybe a good old .gif video?

Microsoft certainly isn't making any friends with Vista either! So not even Youtube would work on XP sp2 machines?

aroab:

So not even Youtube would work on XP sp2 machines?Actually it would, as it uses the javascript-based swfObject to load the videos, rather than a static loading approach.

kuroi:

Actually it would, as it uses the javascript-based swfObject to load the videos, rather than a static loading approach.

I found your suggestions and opions completely useless kuroi.

Im just pissed off that I closed a thread that was much better than your non shalon answers.

Maybe reading here would clarify things:
http://code.google.com/p/swfobject/wiki/documentation

Or maybe here:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/activecontent/articles/devletter.html

Or simply try googling something like "add flash to my site" will find many tutorials.

Or maybe I miss the point of this thread...

Using ac_fl_run_content in EZpage...

I think this work for swf as well.

http://www.laserdiscvault.com/index.php?main_page=page&id=63