Written by: FlashJunkie
Difficulty Level: begining
Requirements: Flash 4
Download FLA

This only works from your Hard Drive or CD-rom.

Flash has a command "FS Command, Exec" which allows you to launch other applications from within a Flash Movie. As far as I can tell (who ever reads documentation?) it has to be done from within an ".exe" file (the standalone player from your "Publish" options.

The code looks like this:

On (Release)
FS Command ("exec", "Test1.exe")
End On

Still, this allows you to create custom interfaces. Possible uses: You could burn a CD with Netscape, Flash plugin installer, and MSIE and have an "autostart" Flash movie that was your installation interface. (You could then put all your Flash websites onto the CD as well as HTML files, and use Flash to link to them using "GetURL", then send out the CD as a resume.)

I have included three tutorial ".exe" files and all associated ".FLA" files.

1) "App-Launcher.exe" which is what you run.
2) "Test1.exe" which will run when you press the first button in the "App-Launcher" file.
3) "Test2.exe" which will run when you press the second button in the "App-Launcher" file.

I suppose someone who knows Javascript would be able to us that to enable an HTML-based ".swf" to send the exec command to launch an application? I'm guessing here, so maybe-maybe not. I don't know javascript. And as for whether this works on Macs, I'm leaving that up to someone with a Mac to discover.