277319 - Flash FSCommand does not work in Firefox

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 233533

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[judah]

Flash communicates to JavaScript through the FSCommand function. This appears to
be broken in Firefox. It appears that the fscommand function is never called as
seen in the example listed. Any site that uses Flash RIA to communicate with
JavaScript will not work in the current release.

Comment 1

[Paul Hanton]

Attachment: Testcase confirming fsCommand does not work in FireFox version 1.0

Internet Explorer deals with the fsCommand quite specifically, in that, Flash
is an ActiveX control so the fsCommand is processed first by a call to VB and
the prgrammer has to then manually implement a VBScript handler to call a
JavaScript function. I hope this helps.

Kind Regards,
Paul Hanton.

Comment 2

[Paul Hanton]

Comment on attachment 170508 [details]
Testcase confirming fsCommand does not work in FireFox version 1.0

Internet Explorer deals with the fsCommand differently because it's an ActiveX
control, first IE calls VB and a handler has to be manually wrtten to call a
JavaScript function.
I hope this helps,
Kind Regards, Paul Hanton.

Comment 3

[judah]

Thanks Paul. This is my first bug report here, I am a flash developer, so I
don't know if you have confirmed it or not. Your comment says "Testcase
confirming fsCommand does not work in FireFox version 1.0" but the status is
still unconfirmed. Judging from your comment I will explain it a little bit better. 

The link that I attached has a Flash embedded object call the fscommand from
within in Flash. The fscommand is the primary command used by Flash to
communicate to JavaScript. Flash then calls and passes two arguments to a
hardcoded JavaScript function (if it exists) in the format
"myMovieName_FSCommand". This function is executed in IE in the manner you
mention and it is also executed in Netscape 7.2. But it is not executed in
Firefox. I am not sure the mechanics of how it is executed in Netscape but it
works. And for some reason that part is missing in Firefox. When you view the
linked page you can call the fscommand (called from the fscommand button) in all
three browsers and confirm if it works or does not work. 
Here is the link to the test page:
http://www.drumbeatinsight.com/examples/mozillaFSCommandTest.html
Here is the link to the flash file where you can see the code: 
http://www.drumbeatinsight.com/examples/mozillaFSCommandTest.fla

Comment 4

[Olivier Cahagne]

wfm using FF 1.0 WinXP + Flash 7.0r19

To make sure you have scripting capability, check if you have flashplayer.xpt in
your \firefox\components\ directory. If not, reinstall Flash 7.

See also:
http://plugindoc.mozdev.org/faqs/flash.html#win-scripting

Comment 5

[Peter van der Woude [:Peter6]]

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.8a6) Gecko/20050107
Firefox/1.0+ Shockwave Flash 7.0 r19

WFM

Comment 6

[judah]

Oliver,

That was the issue. Flash would still display in Firefox so I did not think it
could be as simple as that. Thanks. 

BTW, as of today I've switched from NN7.2 to Firefox. 

Judah

Comment 7

[Bug Tracker]

Please reopen this bug, it is not fixed. With todays nightly I got the 
following error in javscript console.

thanks

Error: plugin.SetWindow is not a function
Source File: javascript: function jsScriptObject(obj) { this.wrappedJSObject = 
obj; } jsScriptObject.prototype = { evaluate : function(expression) { return 
new jsScriptObject(eval(expression)); } }; var plugin = document.embeds
['mozillaFSCommandTest']; plugin.SetWindow(new jsScriptObject
(window),2041163266);
Line: 1

Comment 8

[Bug Tracker]

Uh never mind! I missed the comment #4.
thanks.

Comment 9

[judah]

(In reply to comment #8)
> Uh never mind! I missed the comment #4.
> thanks.
> 

I think that it would be better for Mozilla (firefox) to fail loading the flash
page and give an install plugin error in this situation. Specifically, I had
installed Flash for Netscape 7.2 but not Firefox because I could still see flash
embeds in Firefox. But because Flash was not specifically installed for Firefox
and the flashplayer.xpt was not in \firefox\components\ directory I was not able
to figure out why some of my flash pages were not working. With the component
I'm about to release (HTML Overlay for Flash) this will become a much wider
issue as it needs the fscommand the flashplayer.xpt provides. 

Comment 10

[Kevin Newman]

Could this be another example of Bug 233533 ? If you had Netscape 8 and Flash
plugin installed first, then installed Firefox after those other two, that could
have lead to the missing flashplayer.xpt.

With so many new versions of Mozilla floating around, it would be great to fix
bug 233533 (I tried to fix it myself, but was in way over my head :-) ).

Comment 11

[judah]

(In reply to comment #10)
> Could this be another example of Bug 233533 ? If you had Netscape 8 and Flash
> plugin installed first, then installed Firefox after those other two, that could
> have lead to the missing flashplayer.xpt.
> 
> With so many new versions of Mozilla floating around, it would be great to fix
> bug 233533 (I tried to fix it myself, but was in way over my head :-) ).

Yes, this is a duplicate. I posted a comment there as well. It is over my head
as well but from the comments posted it should be easy for someone that works on
the project from time to time. What I suggest is when they search for the flash
plugin also search for the flashplayer.xpt. If BOTH are not found then display
the Install Plugin message. Right now it seems it justs checks if the flash
player plugin is installed. 

Comment 12

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
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If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
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Thank you for your help in this matter.

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Seamonkey:   http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/

Comment 13

[Kevin Newman]

This is a real bug, but it is mentioned in many places - and has actually been
fixed outside of Firefox by Macromedia with Flash Player 8.