Dreamweaver CS6: The Missing Manual

Automate the Flash Download

Even though the Flash plug-in is nearly universal, you can’t be sure that every visitor’s browser has it. In addition, you may have created a Flash movie that runs only in the latest version of the plug-in, so a visitor might have the Flash plug-in, but not the correct version of it. The result? A movie that either doesn’t play back at all or doesn’t play back as it should. Guests who fall into this category have to choose from three equally unpalatable options: go to a different website to download the plug-in, skip the multimedia show (if you’ve built a second, plug-in-free version of your site), or skip your website entirely.

UP TO SPEED: The Land of Obsolete Web Technology

Dreamweaver CS6 includes several other options in the Media menu of the Insert panel (see Figure 14-2). Some have been around since Dreamweaver was in training pants, and most of them don’t see much use on today’s Web; they either don’t work for many users, or creating the content to work with these technologies is so hard that few web designers bother. In addition, some of the technologies look like they’re being phased out by their creators.

Shockwave is a web technology that’s been around a long time. It’s the Internet-ready form of movies created with Adobe Director. Historically, Director was a program for creating CD-ROMs. But when the Web exploded onto the scene, Director quickly morphed into a web authoring tool, and its movie-creation tool was called Shockwave. As a result ...