The released version of FutureSplash Animator includes a "Working with HTML" lesson. For those of you using the FutureSplash Animator Trial version, the information below should help to get you started. There is additional information included in the "Working with HTML" lesson.
You can use the OBJECT and EMBED tags in your HTML document to display FutureSplash Player movies. By using both the EMBED and OBJECT tags in an HTML document, you can make your page work well with both Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer. You can also use the NOEMBED tag with the IMG tag to include a GIF file in place of the FutureSplash Player movie or image. This allows browsers that don’t support ActiveX or plug-ins to view your site.
<OBJECT classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://www.futurewave.com/fsplash.cab" width=100 height=80> <PARAM name="Movie" value="moviename.spl"> <EMBED src="moviename.spl" width=100 height=80 pluginspage="http://www.futurewave.com/downloadfs.htm"> <NOEMBED> <IMG src="moviename.gif" width=100 height=80> </NOEMBED> </OBJECT>
The OBJECT tag is for Internet Explorer 3.0 or later. The "classid" must appear exactly as it does in this example. The "codebase" tells the browser where to find the FutureSplash Player for automatic download.
The EMBED tag is for Netscape Navigator 2.0 or later. The "pluginspage" tells the browser where to find the FutureSplash Player for automatic download.
The NOEMBED tag with the IMG tag is for displaying a GIF in browsers that don't support ActiveX or plug-ins.
When testing on a local hard drive, the browser knows that .spl files require the FutureSplash Player, but when you access files from a Web server, the server must also know about FutureSplash Player files.
Ask your server administrator to map the ".spl" file extension to the "application/futuresplash" MIME type. Following is the MIME type information:
Server Setup Requirements (All Servers)
MIME Type: application/futuresplash
Suffix: .spl
Additional Server Setup Requirements (Mac Servers Only)
Action: Binary
Type: TEXT
Creator: FSpl
Once the MIME type is set on the server your site is located on, people using Netscape 2.0 or later will be able to see your FutureSplash Player movies or images.
Note that Internet Explorer 3.0 with ActiveX does not require the MIME type, because the OBJECT tag tells it which ActiveX component to use.
You can set the type in your EMBED tag to tell Netscape Navigator 3.0 what MIME type to use for the .spl file extension. This is something that you can use while you are waiting for the server administrator to set the MIME type on the server. This will allow people browsing with Netscape Navigator 3.0 to see the FutureSplash Player movies and images on your site before the MIME type is set on the server. The Netscape Navigator 2.0 browser requires that the MIME type is set on the server, so people using that version of the browser will not be able to see the FutureSplash Player movies and images.
Use "type=application/futuresplash" in the EMBED tag to set the MIME type for Netscape Navigator 3.0. Following is an example EMBED tag that uses the "type" parameter:
<EMBED src=moviename.spl type=application/futuresplash width=100% height=100%>
If the FutureSplash Player graphic appears very small when you open it in your browser, and there is a lot of blank area around it, you need to resize your movie or image before you export the FutureSplash Animator document to a FutureSplash Player movie or image (.spl file). You can find information about fixing this in the FutureSplash Animator FAQ, in the Document Size section.)
If you would like people who go to your site to see a graphic or movie in Netscape even without the plug-in installed, you can include the "detect" javascript and cookie setup in your HTML document. For information about this, go to http://www.futurewave.com/detect/detect.htm.
Advanced HTML programmers who are familiar with JavaScript may want use this in their HTML documents. You can get the HTML code that you need at the detect link by viewing the Document or Frame Source when that page is located in your browser window. You can save the source to your hard disk and modify the source to sut your needs from that text file.
We strongly recommend a knowledge of JavaScript and cookies before attempting to use these files, because you will have to make changes to the HTML to suit your site’s setup.
You can link to our assisted install page so that people trying to view your site won’t have to restart after installing the FutureSplash Player Netscape plug-in. This will work for Netscape Navigator 3.0 or later. People using Netscape Navigator 2.x will have to restart their browser after installing the plug-in.
If the site is a high traffic site, advanced HTML programmers who are familiar with JavaScript may want to include an assisted install page directly on their site. Check our server setup page if you would like to perform the assisted install on your own server.
Because of limitations in Netscape Navigator 2.0’s support for relative URLs, it is important to always keep your FutureSplash Player (.spl) files in the same directory as the HTML page it appears on. With FutureSplash Player 1.0, relative URLs specified in a .spl file are relative to the URL of that .spl file. With ActiveX, relative URLs are relative to the HTML file that the .spl file is embedded in. This difference means that you should always keep your .spl file in the same directory as the HTML file that references it. Also, the Macintosh version of FutureSplash Player 1.0 does not handle URLs of the form "../page.htm" properly.
To eliminate these problems in the future, FutureSplash Player 1.1 uses a new feature in Netscape Navigator 3.0 to make relative URLs behave the same as they do with ActiveX. We do not recommend that you take advantage of this for now, because it only works if a user has Netscape Navigator 3.0 and FutureSplash Player version 1.1. We do think that this will be an important enhancement in the future, however.
Netscape Navigator 2.0 does not handle the layout of plug-ins in table cells properly. If you want people using Navigator 2.0 to access you web site, it is best to design your HTML so that there are no EMBED tags inside of a table. Netscape Navigator 3.0 and Internet Explorer 3.0 should work fine with the EMBED tag in tables. Therefore, FutureSplash Player movies and images will work fine in table cells when viewing with Netscape Navigator 3.0 and Internet Explorer 3.0.
If you would like your FutureSplash Player movies or images to appear in table cells on your web site, be sure to include a warning on your page that the site is designed for viewing with Netscape Navigator 3.0 and Internet Explorer 3.0. You may also want to include an alternate site for Netscape 2.x users to switch to.
All server software packages have their own way of setting the MIME type. Take a look at the documentation for the server software you are using to find out how to set the MIME type in that package. Following are some links to the documentation located at the web sites of some server software packages:
These links will take you directly to the information about the MIME types, or to the page where you can download the documentation for that software. If your server software package is not listed here, you can do a web search for their site and locate the documentation there. If we have missed a server software package in our list, feel free to e-mail us the server software package name and link to the documentaion page, so that we can add it to this FAQ.