Web Design in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

Flash Printing

Another interface between the browser and printer comes from the folks at Macromedia. Flash 4.0 introduced a new feature to give developers control over printing Flash content. Prior to Version 4, when a Flash movie was printed from a browser, the printout contained only the first frame (probably not the most useful frame) or nothing at all. To fix this, Flash Player can print any content specified by the designer.

This feature can be used to print out a more meaningful frame from the movie, but why stop there? Because any content can be cued to print, the Flash movie can serve as an interactive interface to all sorts of documents. A banner ad can spit out a coupon that shoppers can take to the store. A children’s drawing program could print out the finished artwork or other coloring book-like pages. A small diagram could print pages of detailed specifications. Flash printing offers powerful possibilities for enhancing online interactivity with print components.

Users print Flash content via a context-sensitive menu accessed when clicking (Option-click for Windows; Control-click for Mac) on the Flash content, or by using a button designed into the Flash movie itself. The print function in the browser does not print the alternative Flash content.

The Flash print command triggers an ActionScript (the scripting language used in Flash) that detects the plug-in version; if it finds the compatible plug-in, it prints the specified Flash content. The content it prints is stored ...