2 fairly simple (i hope) questions

[mortalwombat]

i am trying to put the finishing touches on a flash presentation that i have. you can view it at http://system7design.com

it loads dynamic data from an html and then is formatted with an external css file. simple enough right? well i have two things i want to fix on it.

1: when you click a link it doesnt open in a new browser very well. if i use target="_blank" in the html, firefox (and perhaps other browsers) tries to block the popup. i tried using some javascript in the html, but that just made the link do nothing at all. is there a way to do that?

2: i have noticed that when i make a change to the news section, the browser will have the news.html file cached so it wont load the new version, leading the viewer to see no changes. does actionscript allow us to either keep this file from cacheing, have it reload if its a later version, or perhaps just overwrite the cached version each time it loads?

[flashbot]

Mortal,

First of all, this is a Actionscript forum and I didn't see any Flash on the url you provided (nor the presentation you were referring to). Please let us know if I'm mistaken.

Second of all, using target="_blank" shouldn't give you any block popup problems (window.open actually opens a new window and browsers interprets it as a popup.)

Finally, the cache situation will not affect the user experience. It is something local, which can be configured in your browser. If you press CONTROL+F5 you actually jump the cache, same as adding an extra "/" on the full url.

Any browser will allow you to "clear the cache" in the properties tab.

Hope this was helpfull.

[mortalwombat]

I will take this as a compliment. i wanted to be sure my flash was integrated enough to where users wouldn't realize it is flash, but would feel it is a normal part of the page. i guess it worked :) believe me though, that there is flash on the page. the scrollbox for the news section is 100% flash. here is the url to the swf directly. http://system7design.com/news_scroller.swf

you mentioned that using target="_blank" SHOULDN'T give me any popup blocker problems, but the FF1 popup blocker does. i guess i am just wondering if there is something else i could try. i know its a minor problem, but i hate minor problems more than major problems.


i know you can clear the cache (although was unaware of the ctrl+F5 trick. thanks!), but i try to design for the least intelligent person on earth. I also try to assume each viewer has the default settings in their browser. i figure, if they are smart enough to change settings, they are probably smart enough to realize why things display differently. that way my page is accessible to the biggest bulk of people. that is what i am trying to accomplish here. if this small html file WOULDN'T cache, then i would know they are seeing the latest updates at all times. however, if it is a 100% local issue, i suppose there is nothing i can do.

[Paul Ferrie]

HAHA you had me fooled as well. Well done!:)