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Portable Flash Player

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swatmajor1
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Portable Flash Player

Hi there.

I am trying to adapt the Flash player I have developed (Swatmajor1's Flash Player) into a portable version, with no success. It is a VB6 coded program, so it shouldn't be too difficult to make portable.

The idea came from Portable Firefox. Copy the Flash plug in from its default location (In this case ..\system32\macromed\flash) and paste it into the programs directory.

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.

Signing off,

Swatmajor1

PS

Feel free to check out Swatmajor1's Flash Player at http://www.swatmajor1.co.nr

Ryan McCue
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Well

To be portable, it can't write to the registry and if it writes to a fixed path, (E.g. %APPDATA%) it must be changeable from a setting or command line parameter.
----
Ryan McCue
Person 1: Oh my god. You will never believe what just happened.
Person 2: What?
Person 1: I can't remember, I've forgotten.

"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."

swatmajor1
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Well...

My program doesn't write to the registry(To the best of my knowledge). Any file associations are dealt with during installation, and this app will not associate itself with Flash files.

I even used the program at TAFE (Tech or Community Collage to you yanks), and no issues with the registry came up, so it should be right for any registry problems.

Signing off,

Swatmajor1

Ryan McCue
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Woot!

Australia rocks!

Anyway, does it write any settings and if so, where to?
----
Ryan McCue
Person 1: Oh my god. You will never believe what just happened.
Person 2: What?
Person 1: I can't remember, I've forgotten.

"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."

swatmajor1
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Auzzie Auzzie Auzzie. Oi Oi Oi

Auzzie fact of the day: In the late 80's, Australian hackers hacked into US military and NASA mainframes.

And to answer your question, no. My program does not write any settings to the registry.

Ryan McCue
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We beat the Poms in Cricket!

Does it use fixed paths?
----
Ryan McCue
Person 1: Oh my god. You will never believe what just happened.
Person 2: What?
Person 1: I can't remember, I've forgotten.

"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."

swatmajor1
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We beat the poms at everything

Just to let you know, I'm relatively new to programming, so lets see if I can answer this.

Yes. It uses fixed paths to locate the plugins it needs to run (Flash)

No. There are no settings which can be written, so it doesn't write any files which rely on the program being run from the same location.

Sorry if none of this answers your question. I'll try to find out more about what my program does without my knowledge..... Yes, that sounds very encouraging.....

Ryan McCue
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'Cept Beach Cricket

How does it locate the plugins, and could it use relative paths instead?
----
Ryan McCue
Person 1: Oh my god. You will never believe what just happened.
Person 2: What?
Person 1: I can't remember, I've forgotten.

"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."

Udi
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Pre-packed flash plugin?

It's a perfect idea to make a portable flash player, because that's the only thing I need to make a fully portable swf making application (already managed to move mtasc and swfmill to SciTE Portable). Would you redistribute the flash-plugin with your app, or it would just copy it in the right directory at the first run? Because there are some other (and maybe easier) solutions aswell. I thought about making an application with Screenweaver OS 3.1, which would be a simple swf file, loading a movie, and resizing the window, according the movie's size (any other features are unnecessary for me). And there's an option that you can pack the flash plugin inside the exe file, no copying needed. Or I thought about making a ScreenweaverHx application, doing the same thing, with only one exception, that a ScreenweaverHx standalone programme is using some extra dll-s, and you need FireFox flash plugin, so you wouldn't get only one .exe file, but you can redistribute all of them inside the program's directory. Any suggestions, ideas?

swatmajor1
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Unfortunately, VB6 use

Unfortunately, VB6 use absolute paths for locating plugins. But C++ may be capable of relative paths, I am yet to learn C++, not til semester 2 IPT Sad

I know I'm not the best guy to do such a project, and anything which will point me in the right direction is greatly appreciated.

swatmajor1
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Success, I think

I believe that I may have got the answer.

After taking my program, made in VB6, converted it to VB2005, creating .dll files making flash compatible with VB2005, then adding those files and the flash plugin into the VB2005 project and compiling.

It does require a couple of .dll files to be shipped out with the mail exe, but it doesn't really matter.

If anyone has a PC which doesn't have flash on it, can you beta test it and post your response on here.

click here to download.

Lets hope this works.

Udi
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won't start

The App won't start on my Windows XP. I get an error message, which says that the applications initialization is not appropriate (0xc0000135). Or something like that, I have Hungarian windows... But looking at the size of your files, I have doubt if you have compiled a flash player with it. The latest flash plugin is over 1 mb!

swatmajor1
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Oh the pain of failure

I just noticed myself about this. It looks like back to the drawing board.

Sad Sad Sad Sad Sad Sad

Try this here

Udi
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The same error message

Yes, the new version seems to contain the flash player, but I'm unable to launch it :(. Same error message on another XP SP2.

swatmajor1
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Lets just hope

Its been quiet at Swatmajor1 HQ, but it is believed that Swatmajor1's Flash Player can be used portably. Click here to beta test it and leave comments here.

ozbodd
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Works

Would it be possible to code in a fullscreen view command?

swatmajor1
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Full screen time!!!

I know this is a bit of a cheat, but I don't care. To Use full Screen, I've latched onto WMP. It is not included but WMP is on every Windows machine in some form, so no errors should arise.

Let me know if it doesn't work.

Click here to download.

Udi
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Works for me

Tha last version works for me too. But actually the fullscreen mode is very funny :). Swf files in WMP? Interesting... As for me, I hate WMP. And I was not able to control one of my movies with Key.isDown events in full screen mode. So, there are some bugs for games...

Udi
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Got stuck

I spend a lot of time with Screenwaver 3 OS, and swhx, but I got stuck. Screenweaver 3 OS seems to be good, but currently I'm unable to produce softwares with it, because it's AS api is very old and MTASC won't compile it. Maybe I'll rewrite all the apis, but it needs a lot of time... The other solution swhx has a bug: it can't reach Key.isDown() actions. So, your old games won't work with it :(. So, my idea that we could write a flash player in flash is currently impossible to make with open source tools...

swatmajor1
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Beta 1 ready

WMP, gone. Theres not much I can say apart from that so see below.

Click here to download.

Udi
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Improvements

It's very cool, but you could improve it a bit. Could you make the window resize to the size of the swf movie? It's not good by testing, that you see your movie resized. And another suggestion: could you manage that if I give a file as a commandline parameter the splash screen won't pop up? It would speed up my testings. Anyway, this player is very usefull for me, so thanks a lot ;)!

swatmajor1
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Beta 2 release

Thanks for the support everyone. Beta 2 is now out. Here are a list of improvements.

No splash screen
Movies fit nicely into window, no matter what

Click here to download.

Many more improvements are no doubtfully required, but whats the fun in fully working program. If we wanted that, we wouldn't buy Windows Smile

As always, the input, help and support of everyone is greatly appreciated.

Signing off,

Swatmajor1

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