Environment communication

What is around Flash?

Everything you created in Flash environment after publishing is encapsulated in the single SWF file or stand-alone EXE file. You know that if you want your movie to be placed on Internet you need have the Flash file embedded in HTML page. In the HTML code that generated when publishing you may find several parameters where HTML tells SWF file how to be displayed. There are for example such parameters as movie width and height on the page.

However we didn't learn about opportunity to send parameters from Flash file to the environment. Is it possible for example to tell something to HTML page from inside SWF file? Or is it possible to send some information to the server if user fill in the form composed from Flash components? Is it possible to communicate with printer?

The answer on those question – "yes" and today you will be introduced to several techniques for communicating between Flash movie and the environment. We said – "introduced" - because to learn about all details of external communications you need to know not only about Flash but about environment you work in. Working on the junction demands knowledge of such languages as JavaScript, VBScript, PHP, SQL applications such Macromedia Director, techniques like ASP or JSP and so on. Because of that some examples in this lesson will be illustrative – you will see how it works but to implement them you'll need more software and sometimes more training in other technologies.

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