Flash Movie to Play Sitewide w/o Re-Starting...

Question

Hi,
Is it possible to have a Flash movie play sitewide without
re-starting on each page and without using frames?
How?
Thanks!

Answer 1

You could hack something with unique URL's to get the SWF to
stay on the correct section. I've seen some interesting ideas in
this train of thought for making the SWF work with the back button
of the browser. Essentially, you would cause each "page" or
"section" of your SWF to change the url to something like "
http://www.myWebsite.com?sect=portfolio"
changing the ?sect= at the end each time. Then, have the HTML
auto-read that URL variable and pass it into the SWF. In the SWF,
check to see if the variable exists, if not, play from the start,
if it does, go straight to that section. This would mimick the type
of behavior you are looking for, and you would have the added
benefit of a browser page-like structure that works with the
back/forward buttons.
The downside is you would need a page-refresh in-between SWF
sections, though the SWF would be cached, so the user wouldn't need
to re-download it. Of course, you could use some AJAX structure to
get rid of the white flicker of the screen...... but that is
another discussion entirely.
Hope I gave you a good starting point for some play. It may
be more of a hassle than its worth to do this, but definitely
possible.