Comments on: Introducing the CaptivateController

By: philip

philip — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 00:55:45 +0000

Controlling the Captivate SWF via ActionScript is much easier than JavaScript. ActionScript provides direct access to the SWF’s properties and child movieclips, whereas with JavaScript you can only access whatever the developer (in this case Adobe) has made publicly accessible via ExternalInterface or SetVariable. Unfortunately, the sample code you provided will not work in JavaScript.

By: Todd Haynes

Todd Haynes — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 20:14:33 +0000

Philip, hello again, been awhile! I’ve been using your code again, and ran into two issues you might address in a future version.

Information Window
I can’t get the information toggle to work – the code that will display Captivate’s information window, that displays information about the movie, author, copyright, etc. Tried in Captivate 3 and 4, with movies that have/don’t have a playbar. No biggie there, but for some folks, info button is a big deal.

Table of Contents
Still haven’t given up on this, trying to get a button to open/close the Table of Contents in Captivate 4 movies. Another user posted this ActionScript that should work with AS2 flash movies to control the TOC, his working example seems to do the trick:

this.stop();
_parent._parent._parent.ShowHideTocLeft_mc._visible = false;
_parent._parent._parent.ShowHideTocRight_mc._visible = false;
this.but_mc.onRelease = function(){
_parent._parent._parent.TOCManager.showTOC();
_parent._parent._parent.ShowHideTocRight_mc._visible = false;
_parent._parent._parent.ShowHideTocLeft_mc._visible = false;
};

By: philip

philip — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 21:25:36 +0000

Captivate 4 uses ExternalInterface for its JS-ActionScript communication. Local communication is disallowed by default in Flash player’s security settings. This means ExternalInterface will NOT work locally unless you change your Flash Player’s security settings to allow communication in that specific location. This also explains why it works on a server but not locally.

By: Gecco

Gecco — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 21:22:22 +0000

I’ve got it … after testing it on a server it works … Thanks.

By: Gecco

Gecco — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 21:19:11 +0000

Hey philip, thanks for the very fast reply. I’ve just saved with firefox this webpage to my computer – including all the js, css and swf files. Without any editing. I’ve just checked if the linking was ok.

When I’m starting it locally on my pc everything seems to be fine. CSS is working, SWFs are loading. But after entering the variable in CP, clicking the submit and the “Retrieve variable ‘pipwerks’” button it returns always “Captivate returned false”.