Embed Flash into your pages with any HTML editor including FrontPage 2000 - 2002

 

The easiest way to insert a Flash movie into any web page including Frontpage (2000 or 2002) is to open up Flash and first publish your finished Flash movie as an HTML page from within the Flash program, where you can select many additional formats including .fla, .swf, HTML, .mov, .gif, etc... Flash will generate an HTML page (if you tell it to) with all the code you need to insert into any HTML.

In Flash with your .fla (original, editable file) open, select 'File | Publish Settings', click on the 'Formats' tab and check .swf and HTML. Click the 'publish' or 'ok' button. Your files will be created in the same folder as your original .fla file.

The terminology may be confusing to most, since Flash itself 'publishes' the .swf movie and generates a generic pre-coded HTML page at the same time. To most HTML users, 'publishing' means transferring files to the server. Also, most graphic artists consider Flash to be a graphics animation program and the term 'export' as the only way to get a graphic out of Flash. You can export graphics out of Flash but you cannot 'export' a movie from Flash, it has to be 'published' to compile the .fla movie into an .swf and generate the HTML page that includes the code to display it... it's all done from Flash first, not your HTML editor.

The term 'publish' has a very different meaning for Flash than it does for HTML. Flash users know that you must publish (not export) your original Flash file (.fla) from Flash to get a movie (.swf) and an HTML page pre-coded specifically for displaying your movie. Flash will generate and publish an HTML page into the same folder as your original .fla and .swf file. Locate this Flash folder, open the HTML page that Flash generates, cut and paste the code to display your flash file into your regular HTML page. Import your flash file .swf into your web and 'publish' both to your server with your HTML program or ftp. Each time you edit the original .fla in Flash, you must 'publish' an updated .swf file and transfer it to your server. You do not need to publish an updated HTML page out of Flash more than once since the code is all you're after. Once you have the code, it will display your updated .swf file automatically in the original height and width of the movie. Flash's 'export' feature is for exporting simple graphics, not Flash movies or HTML. You can specify in Flash at the time you publish your Flash movie to also publish a pre-coded HTML page that contains your complete movie code by checking the 'HTML' box as an option at the time of publishing in Flash.

After you 'publish' your movie from Flash to include an HTML page, just position your cursor where you want the movie to be on your HTML program formatted page or template, then copy and paste the code from the Flash HTML generated page that is between the <OBJECT> and <EMBED> tags of Flash HTML page into your editing program HTML page. Use the 'Insert | Advanced | HTML' choice from the drop down in FP 2000 or use the 'Insert | Web Component | Advanced Controls | HTML' choice for FP 2002 to paste the Flash code in. You just paste the code into all other programs (including FP 2003) and edit the code to match the file paths on your server, making sure to upload your .swf file also.

Flash Code Example (for manual insertion) Copy and paste into an HTML page. Edit it with your own Flash movie's information:

<!-- URL's used in the movie--> <!-- text used in the movie--> <OBJECT classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,0,0" WIDTH="550" HEIGHT="400" id="yourfilename" ALIGN=""><PARAM NAME=movie VALUE="yourfile.swf"> <PARAM NAME=menu VALUE=false> <PARAM NAME=quality VALUE=high> <PARAM NAME=scale VALUE=exactfit> <PARAM NAME=bgcolor VALUE=#000000> <EMBED src="yourfile.swf" menu=false quality=high scale=exactfit bgcolor=#000000 WIDTH="550" HEIGHT="400" NAME="yourfilename" ALIGN="" TYPE="application/x-shockwave-flash" PLUGINSPAGE="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"></EMBED> </OBJECT>

 

 

Editing In FrontPage - Once the code is inserted, it can be edited by choosing 'View | Reveal Tags' from the drop down menu of FrontPage in the Normal view. Now you can see the webbot component.   In this view mode you can copy and paste the whole component to any place on the HTML page or even into another page if you want.

To change the size of the movie displayed in the page, just right click on the component and choose 'HTML Markup Properties' and edit the Flash code you just inserted.

To change the file positioning or other FrontPage properties on the page, just highlight the component and apply changes from the drop down menu of FrontPage or use the FP toolbar to change the position of the file in the page.

There are other ways to insert Flash into FrontPage, but this is the quickest and easiest way. If you want to view your Flash file from the Normal view of FrontPage, you can remove the beginning and ending webbot tags. Although if you want to edit the file after removing these tags, you will have to use a script editor, as you will no longer be able to right click and open the webbot from the normal view in FrontPage. You may also be able to edit the code in HTML view of FP2002 if you have chosen the setting to 'Preserve Existing HTML' in the page properties of the HTML source.

If you do not already have a formatted page or template that you want to put the Flash file in, you can just import the complete Flash generated HTML page (and the .swf file) into your web and then edit it in your HTML program to match your site.

 

After your page is uploaded to your server, (don't forget to import your .swf movie into your web and publish it too) the code generated by Flash will automatically detect and prompt your visitor if s/he needs to download the correct version of the Flash plugin needed for viewing your movie without any other code being necessary by you.
 

 

FrontPage 2003:

FrontPage 2003 will automatically generate the code for you and prompt the end user to download the latest version of Flash player (version=6,0,0,0 by default). If your Flash files are made with a previous version ( Flash 4 or Flash 5), you can specify the lesser version required in the code so your users won't be prompted to upgrade their viewer when it's not necessary for viewing your files.

For example, if all your Flash files are made with Flash 5, change the reference to the player version needed in the HTML code of FrontPage so your users won't be prompted to upgrade unnecessarily. You also can continue to manually insert the code into FrontPage 2003 if you want (see above instructions). Flash player versions are listed below:

Flash 4 = (version=4,0,0,0)
Flash 5 = (version=5,0,0,0)
FlashMX= (version=6,0,0,0)
FlashMX 2004 = (version=7,0,0,0)

Also, be aware that if you let FP 2003 insert your Flash movie into the page, you must manually code the file to include the <embed> tags needed for Netscape, as FP 2003 does not automatically insert the code needed for Netscape users to be able to view your Flash file. Therefore, it is recommended that you cut and paste the code into your FP page from the Flash generated HTML page as explained above.

To insert Flash into FrontPage 2003 automatically, first import the Flash file into your web or a 'Flash' folder within your web. Open the page where you want to insert the Flash movie. In FP 2003, Choose 'Insert | Picture | Movie in Flash Format' from the menu bar and select the file. It will look like this in the page:

Right click on the Flash file in the page, select to 'Play Movie in Flash Format', which will play it in design mode without switching views.

Right click on the Flash file and select 'Movie in Flash Format Properties' which will allow you to change the size, transparency, background colors and quality of the movie from the 'Appearance' tab.

The 'General' properties tab lets you specify whether the Flash movie can loop, auto play or to show menu on the file when it's viewed on the web.

Save the page and publish the files to your remote server.