Problem with Fullscreen Flash Projectors

 Posted on Sun Mar 16 2008 in Flash by Tim

If you use the Flash standalone player there was a change in version 9.0r115 that affects how fullscreen projectors work. You should probably find out about this before your clients start complaining.

It's quite common to use a fullscreen Flash projector as the splash screen for a CD. It's also common to open PDF files and other applications on top of these fullsceen projectors.

You can't make a document or application appear above a fullscreen Flash projector without a little help (see Opening PDF files on top of interface on FlashKit) but at least it could be done.

If you've upgraded to version 9.0r115 of the Flash player then you can't do this any more. As soon as you make a call to getURL, navigateToURL or the EXEC fscommand your projector window will automatically exit fullscreen mode and return to windowed mode.

This problem doesn't affect SWF Studio, our fullscreen projectors will stay in fullscreen mode for as long as you want them to, this problem only affects verison 9.0r115 of the standalone Flash player.

The only workaround I can recommend right now is NOT publishing directly to an EXE from Flash using 9.0r115. Instead, publish to SWF format and use an older version of the standalone Flash player to create your projector.

To do this, just run the old Flash player and drag and drop your SWF on it. Then you can choose the Create Projector option from the File menu (see below) and create an EXE from your SWF using the exact version of the standalone Flash player you want.



The projectors you create using the Flash 9.0r115 player will have an icon like this:



Older Flash players use this icon:



If you don't have your old Flash player, technote 14266 contains a collection of links to archived Flash players that Adobe has made available for testing purposes.

Comments



Thank you for reporting this bug, we had hit this bug as well with the Flash CS3 update.

This bug had caused us to return to Flash8 IDE for the active development, although one may just replace Flash 9.0r115 player with the lower version while still continue to use Flash CS3 IDE for the development and compiling of Adobe Flash standalone projector.
Posted by JabbyPanda on 21 Mar 2008 at 2:43pm
thank you for that info, i thought i was going mad, i've spent all afternoon going over my code trying to work out why suddenly my fullscreen display is now not fullscreen after the screensaver kicks in.. now i know. big thank you to you and kick in the bum to Adobe. i'll try your work around.
Posted by Richard on 26 Mar 2008 at 1:55am
Yep, thanks... It works now when I export the movie in Flash Player 7 mode. Then create a projector from the swf file...
Posted by Joel on 14 Oct 2008 at 6:35pm
Thank you, I thought I was insane too.

Recently, I was trying to make the switch from Director to Flash for our standalone projector requirements.

I only wish I'd found this sooner as I had to go back and redo my project the old fashioned way in Director. I'll be ready next year/client.
Posted by Stepher on 31 Oct 2008 at 4:25pm
Thanks for this. I've tried the above but with the new flash player 10 (included in CS4) and it worked just fine. So I guess it's time to install CS4 instead of CS3 :)
Posted by Daniel Eriksson on 21 Nov 2008 at 4:51am
"If you don't have your old Flash player, technote 14266 contains a collection of links to archived Flash players that Adobe has made available for testing purposes."

That page contains old versions of the BROWSER PLUGIN player, not stand alone players
Posted by matteo on 3 May 2011 at 7:42am
Actually, the ZIP files that you can download contain BOTH. In fact, if you look you'll find the browser plugins and standalone players for Windows, Mac and Linux (when they were available of course).
Posted by Tim on 3 May 2011 at 9:23am
I am looking for the Standalone player for Flash r45 for a Mac and can't seem to find it anywhere. I downloaded the Flash 9 archive but for any version before 115 (when this problem bc a problem) there are only browser plug-ins. I also tried exporting from CS5 and the problem still lingers after I call an fscommand exec. Sooo frustrating! Does anyone know where to get the mac standalone for Flash 9 r45?
Posted by Carol on 8 Nov 2011 at 4:01pm
Do you still have your old Flash 9 CDs? If so you can reinstall and use that fresh install to get a copy of the old standalone player. If you can't find yours I know I have mine around somewhere. I could recompile your project for you if you REALLY need it (and if the SA player version from the original CDs I have is the one you need).
Posted by Tim on 8 Nov 2011 at 5:06pm

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