Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

You are here: MacNN Forums > Software - Troubleshooting and Discussion > Developer Center > Flash pages print... not?

Flash pages print... not?
Thread Tools
Love Calm Quiet
Mac Elite
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: CO
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 9, 2006, 03:05 PM
 
Is it something inherent in Flash that its stuff won't generally print.
I just tried to print (Safari) a web developer's homepage (which seemed to be all Flash).... and all my Preview showed was the headers/footers from Safari. Is that true for PC browsers, too?

Another reason to ~love~ Flash? Just like how it makes it impossible to drag-n-copy any text.

Any of you devs using it who can comment?
TOMBSTONE: "He's trashed his last preferences"
     
skalie
Mac Elite
Join Date: Mar 2002
Location: Clogland
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 9, 2006, 03:53 PM
 
If you want something to be printed from your Flash movie you used to have to mess around with some coding to allow that to happen, not sure if that's still the case with the latest versions. ( Would "print screen" not serve you purposes? )

As far as the text issue goes, there is an option to make text "selectable" when developing in Flash, I think that is/was as default, "no".
     
tooki
Admin Emeritus
Join Date: Oct 1999
Location: Zurich, Switzerland
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 11, 2006, 01:12 PM
 
Flash is appropriate for probably 1% of the situations where it is used. All the rest are abuse, where Flash does nothing but reduce the quality of the site.

On the web, just ignore Flash and learn XHTML and CSS.

tooki
     
skalie
Mac Elite
Join Date: Mar 2002
Location: Clogland
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 11, 2006, 02:01 PM
 
Originally Posted by tooki
Flash is appropriate for probably 1% of the situations where it is used. All the rest are abuse, where Flash does nothing but reduce the quality of the site.

On the web, just ignore Flash and learn XHTML and CSS.

tooki

WTF? You're an admin here with a post like that?

#1 really really really fooking helpfull

#2 biased as all fook.

#3 I'd rather watch flash flv's, than quicktime, me. Yahoo! tends to agree.

Here's a tip tookie.... take all your clothes off, stand in front of the mirror amd TAKE A GOOD LONG LOOK AT YOURSELF !!!.
     
maccrazy
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Aug 2004
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 11, 2006, 05:19 PM
 
I agree with tooki, Flash is often used just for the sake of it which often lowers the standard of the site.
maccrazy.net - Your
news, rumors and forums....
     
madmacgames
Grizzled Veteran
Join Date: Oct 2003
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 11, 2006, 06:18 PM
 
I do not think Flash was ever designed to be a portable document medium or a printable medium. I don't think it ever claimed to be either. Flash is a media medium. So that it does not print, or does not print well, or that text is usually not selectable, well is to be absolutely expected.

By way of example with another media medium, pop a DVD into your computer and when the menu comes up in DVD player, try to select the text. You might be thinking "I already know you cannot do that." Well the same is true of flash.

Again, its a media medium, not a document medium. This is directly in conflict with web pages since HTML is a document medium. Flash seems to be headed towards being both a media and document medium, but still has a way to go in the document area, IMO. And that is one of the main reasons, IMO, that flash makes great media (movies, animations, cartoons, games, etc) but poor documents (entire web pages for example)

Now PDFs that don't have selectable text but have text as an image instead, that might be something to rant about, since PDF is a document medium.
The only thing necessary for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing
- Edmund Burke
     
skalie
Mac Elite
Join Date: Mar 2002
Location: Clogland
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 11, 2006, 07:21 PM
 
Firstly, apologies to tooki for being "just a little" over the top with my reaction in this thread, some adolescent hormones came to the surface earlier, must be a menopause thing.

Secondly, here is an example of how Flash can be truely innovative and also useful web-wise.
Broadmoor Hotel reservations page. (this application is three or so years old I believe)

Thirdly, I agree madmacgames, Flash was never designed to be a document medium, but on the other hand has produced some of the most exciting interactive multimedia experiences the web has ever seen. One day it just might be able to match html in regards to dealing with text, I'd like to see that.
     
gopikrishna
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Boston, MA
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 12, 2006, 09:04 AM
 
I, too, have also been frustrated by unprintable flash pages. If I OWNED the site... I'd like potential customers to be able to PRINT... for their records or whatever. Maybe I show my age, but sometimes I like to have a hard copy.

I've not developed with Flash, but it seems weird to me that MM should make the default be that text (or 'video' if that's what Flash areas should be called) is NOT printable. Why make the DEFAULT be an option that REDUCES visitors' ability to engage with my site's material?

Skalie... Consider your Broadmoor example. Don't I want visitors to be able to PRINT that page to show to friends, family what a cool place I'm visiting? As it is, it takes a technie (most of public has never heard of "screen shots") to print it off.

Short-sighted, IMHO.
     
skalie
Mac Elite
Join Date: Mar 2002
Location: Clogland
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 12, 2006, 09:53 AM
 
Originally Posted by gopikrishna
Skalie... Consider your Broadmoor example. Don't I want visitors to be able to PRINT that page to show to friends, family what a cool place I'm visiting? As it is, it takes a technie (most of public has never heard of "screen shots") to print it off.

Short-sighted, IMHO.
As I said in my first post, it's possible to integrate printing options into Flash. With Flash MX you used to have to put a #P into the timeline of the pages you wanted to print, you could also define the "bounding box", as in how much of the page you wanted printed. There was also the possibility to "Print as bitmap"

This however all needed to be programmed into the movie by the Flash Developer, the reason being that the "print" function in one's browser will print from Flash unpredictably, Flash being vector orientated.

Flash MX2004 ( ActionScript 2.0 ) introduced the PrintJob Class, which gives the ability to print dynamic content and off screen items.

Flash 8 introduced dynamic text which is actually readable !!!! Which is a great bonus for all of us who still need to print screen while waiting for Joe Flash Developer to come up to pace.
     
Love Calm Quiet  (op)
Mac Elite
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: CO
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 12, 2006, 11:35 PM
 
Skalie... are you saying that the Flash PLAYER v.8 (is there such?) will let us print screen even if "Joe Flash Dev" didn't provide for it?

And while we're at it? How can I tell what version of the Player my Safari 2.0.3 is accessing.

(When I go to www.flash.com all I see is talk about the dev tools 8 - nothing about where to DL the Player - so I can't even tell what Player is latest for Mac.)
Thnak for any updating you canprovide me.
TOMBSTONE: "He's trashed his last preferences"
     
madmacgames
Grizzled Veteran
Join Date: Oct 2003
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 13, 2006, 12:24 AM
 
Goto Help -> Installed Plugins to see the exact flash player version. You can also see the major version if you right click on a flash movie in the browser.
The only thing necessary for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing
- Edmund Burke
     
skalie
Mac Elite
Join Date: Mar 2002
Location: Clogland
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 13, 2006, 02:54 AM
 
Originally Posted by Love Calm Quiet
Skalie... are you saying that the Flash PLAYER v.8 (is there such?) will let us print screen even if "Joe Flash Dev" didn't provide for it?
I was having a dig at Flash, and it's blurry way of rendering fonts. Flash 8 ( the latest version of the software ) goes some ways to helping sharpen up the text in Flash.

As to printing directly from the player, I have no idea, nut I'm guessing it would render better results that printing from the broswer self.
     
Chuckit
Clinically Insane
Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: San Diego, CA, USA
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 13, 2006, 05:03 AM
 
Flash is completely awesome if you want to make a vectorized movie or game. Flash is not a legitimate option if you want to make a Web page any more than hitting "Print To PDF" is.
Chuck
___
"Instead of either 'multi-talented' or 'multitalented' use 'bisexual'."
     
Love Calm Quiet  (op)
Mac Elite
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: CO
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 13, 2006, 10:08 AM
 
Originally Posted by Chuckit
Flash is completely awesome if you want to make a vectorized movie or game. Flash is not a legitimate option if you want to make a Web page any more than hitting "Print To PDF" is.
Then I guess illegitimacy is rampant.

And who'd thunk that for once "Help" menu... was! Thanks, Madmac...

I discover: "Shockwave Flash 7.0 r24 — from file “Flash Player.plugin”." Which still leaves me wondering if it's the LATEST version (and since the Flash.com is so UNhelpful at anything but promoting their DESIGN software).
TOMBSTONE: "He's trashed his last preferences"
     
madmacgames
Grizzled Veteran
Join Date: Oct 2003
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 13, 2006, 01:05 PM
 
Originally Posted by Love Calm Quiet
Which still leaves me wondering if it's the LATEST version
No, I upgraded mine the other day or week, I can't quite rememeber which... anyways, the latest is 8, I've got 8.0 rc22.

To get the latest player, you can goto macromedia.com and from the nav menu, hover over downloads (not click), and then from the submenu that comes up, choose "Get Flash Player".

Or if you just click on Downloads then under the "Download Free Players" sections will be Flash Player.
The only thing necessary for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing
- Edmund Burke
     
Chuckit
Clinically Insane
Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: San Diego, CA, USA
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Feb 13, 2006, 01:36 PM
 
Originally Posted by Love Calm Quiet
Then I guess illegitimacy is rampant.
You can tell that just from how many pages require Internet Explorer's broken rules to display correctly.
Chuck
___
"Instead of either 'multi-talented' or 'multitalented' use 'bisexual'."
     
hackman
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Jul 2006
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
May 24, 2006, 11:02 PM
 
>Flash is not a legitimate option if you want to make a Web page any more than hitting "Print To PDF" is.<

You guys miss the mother-lode. Flash is a rich, web-based APPLICATION development environment. We can do things in Flash that can't easily be done using other technologies. Specifically, Flash can hold and compute data locally without having to refresh the browser or hit a serverside script. And if you're good, you can send/receive data to any database without Flash Remoting.

We rarely do Flash animation. But we do Flash rich application development every day for 3 of the Fortune 100. Usually it provides the GUI, the clientside logic, and the data container that communicates with .net and MS-SQL.
     
Love Calm Quiet  (op)
Mac Elite
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: CO
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
May 25, 2006, 08:46 AM
 
rfoil:
Thanks for a whole 'nother bunch of ideas about flash. Obviously, there's some exciting things I never dreamed about.
Most of my experience as a client of FLASH, however, is the animated PITAs of (?newbie?) Flash web designers. Not a pretty thing.
If you've got a recommendation where a Flash-newb could start to get an overview grasp on the sort of App Dev Env features you're mentioning, I'd love ya for it!
TOMBSTONE: "He's trashed his last preferences"
     
iAmJacksPB
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Aug 2006
Status: Offline
Reply With Quote
Jun 13, 2006, 09:43 AM
 
Originally Posted by rfoil
>Flash is a rich, web-based APPLICATION development environment.
rfoil - that's exactly what we do every day too - although we usually connect to ColdFusion or PHP and then to MySQL or PostgreSQL. Your explanation is great.

(I certainly agree with some earlier posters that Flash - like any powerful technology - is often overused, misused, or used by those who don't understand it. But it has so much usefulness when used right.)

The application I'm lovingly developing in my nonexistant spare time is www.aimchart.com

Originally Posted by Love Calm Quiet
If you've got a recommendation where a Flash-newb could start to get an overview grasp on the sort of App Dev Env features you're mentioning, I'd love ya for it!
I have a friend who is happy with the paid tutorials at http://www.lynda.com/ The best free site my occasional googling shows up with is Actionscript.org

For this in general, though:
You need to learn programming. I can't stress enough that to do a good job you'll have to learn programming principles, which are shared between programming languages (which HTML is not) You can certainly start with Actionscript, but you should understand that to be really powerful you will need to learn programming principles and structures in addition to the language itself.

You need to learn programming in Actionscript much more than any GUI Flash features. The Actionscript Language Reference online from Adobe is essentially complete, but not structured like an introduction at all.

To have a database driven site you need to ALSO know how to program in an application server language (ColdFusion/PHP/.NET/ASP/Perl/JSP) and in a database (MySQL, PostgreSQL, MS-SQL, Oracle or even Access)

Or you need to hire someone to do those parts for you. (We do this, if you want, and are willing to work on even pretty tiny projects - or just on the parts you had problems with. You can email ben-macnnprojALBERTxigEINSTEINnet replacing the physicist with @ & . Even so, you should use a descriptive subject to weed yourself from the spam.)


PS: Flex is also really powerful and most of the Actionscript language is directly shared between Flash and Flex. I predict that when the standalone Flex compiler ships a very significant number of Flash application developers will migrate primarily to Flex (which to some extent has begun, imo)

XIG
     
   
Thread Tools
 
Forum Links
Forum Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts
BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Top
Privacy Policy
All times are GMT -4. The time now is 01:56 AM.
All contents of these forums © 1995-2017 MacNN. All rights reserved.
Branding + Design: www.gesamtbild.com
vBulletin v.3.8.8 © 2000-2017, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.,