89771 - Flash 5 plugin doesn't consistently play Flash 4 movie

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Core Graveyard :: Plug-ins, defect)

Description

[hgquinn]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:0.9.2) Gecko/20010628
BuildID:    2001062815 / 2001062xxx

The Flash 4 movie in question expects 2 text variables (from external .txt
files) to complete loading before it moves past its preload sequence.  With
Mozilla 0.9.2, every third (approx) load works correctly; the other two loads
either do not play the movie at all, or get to the point where the text variable
loads should be sensed, then the movie stops.  This movie worked fine with
Mozilla 0.9 (and older NN and IE).  Yesterday at work I installed Mozilla 0.9.2
and saw the problem.  Today at home, I first tested the movie in Mozilla 0.9 &
confirmed there was no problem, then instaledl 0.9.2, and saw the problem is
produced consistently.  Another Flash 4 movie in the same web directory works
with no problems; this other movie (magicbox.html) is not dependent on external
text variable loading.  The Flash movie that has the problem is pupsnlove.swf,
run from pupsnlove.html, and the two .txt files it needs to run are week5tx1.txt
and week5tx2.txt, all in http://www/windyhilldesign/whdwork4/fl_examp.  The
problem occurs in Win ME and Win 98, with two different builds of 0.9.2.


Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Go to URL http://www.windyhilldesign.com/whdwork4/fl_examp/pupsnlove.html.
2. Reload page
3. Reload page
4. Reload page
5. etc.

Actual Results:  Of every three times (approx) you load or reload the page, you
will see the movie load normally, as described in the "Expected Results" field
below.  The other two times, when the movie does not load properly, it either
does not load at all -- sits there on its black background -- or it loads
partially -- gets to the point where the variables loaded from the external .txt
files should be there, and then goes black.  The first result is what you'd get
if the .swf file itself were missing from the web directory.  The second result
is what you'd get if the .txt files the movie needs were missing from the web
directory.  This movie ran with no probs with Mozilla 0.9, and runs with no prob
in NN 4.72 thrpugh 4.77 and IE 5.01 thru 5.5.

Expected Results:  When the movie loads normally, you should see a preload
sequence with some sliding hearts and a dotted-edge rectangle, segueing to a
green box that fades, then two sentences (the text for these come from the
external .txt files mentioned in the prob description above -- the movie checks
for data in the variable fields the .txt files load to before proceeding), then
a fade-out/fade-in sequence, and the appearance of two buttons, the forward of
which take the user to another scene.  Mozilla should consistently load the
movie, but only does so sometimes.

I don't think this is related to the OS, as it occurs with Win 98 and ME using
Mzl 0.9.2, but does not occur with Win 98 and ME with Mzl 0.9.  I think it's
related to the loading of the .txt files the movie needs.  It must be related to
some component, setting or registry entry shared by both builds, as now that I
have 0.9.2 installed, when I run 0.9, I get the same behavior, which did not
occur after many attempts to reproduce it earlier today in 0.9 _before_ I
installed 0.9.2.

The Flash 4 code that loads the data from the .txt files is:

      Load Variables ("week5tx1.txt", "/textload/text1")
      Load Variables ("week5tx2.txt", "/textload/text2")

The Flash 4 code that tests to see if the variables have actually loaded from
the external .txt files is:

      If (/textload/text2:intro  gt " ")
            Set Variable: "textloaded" = 1
            Go to and Play ("done")
      End If

which moves the action forward to display the text and buttons.  If the .txt
files' data doesn't load, the movie loops back to wait for the arrival of the
data.  I think that sometimes the data is never arriving, and sometimes the
movie is apparently never loading.  My assumption is born out by my web stats
for yesterday, which say:

# of  
serves   size   directory/file
-------  ------ --------------------------------
35        10745 /whdwork4/fl_examp/pupsnlove.html
21       845998 /whdwork4/fl_examp/pupsnlove.swf
14         2668 /whdwork4/fl_examp/week5tx1.txt
14         2968 /whdwork4/fl_examp/week5tx2.txt

Normally, there would be an approximate one-for-one relationship in the number
of serves for the .html, .swf and .txt files.

Comment 1

[Igor Kushnirskiy]

moving to plugins

Comment 2

[Keyser Sose]

Still a problem in the latest nightlies?

Comment 3

[hgquinn]

All OK with build 2001080114.