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Addressing the "getURL" FireFox bug - AS 2.0 and AS 3.0

By Erik Liddell | Published 11/15/2007 | Flash | Rating:

Erik Liddell

Erik Liddell is an interactive designer based out of Boston MA. He graduated from The School of The Museum of Fine Arts Boston where he focused in Experimental Film and Multi-Media Design.

View all articles by Erik Liddell

The Problem and solution

When your computer calls a file like a PDF to your default browser it does so with a command that looks something like this:

yourBrowser -url "file:///c:your.pdf

When using getUrl(); to say:
getUrl("your.pdf","_blank", "GET");
flash actually posts a command like this:

yourBrowser -url "file:///c|your.pdf

Note the Red. Flash changes the ":" to a "|"

Now for what ever reason, IE automaticly interperets them both as a semi colon or ":" But Firefox seems to interperet the "|" as a new tab.

So what do we do? Well we are going to create our own URL, convert it to a string and replace the "|" with a ":"

The first step of this is to find out the directory our SWF resides in and turn that into a variable.

var swfDir:String = _root._url;

next we find the last slash in that string:

var lastSlash:Number = swfDir.lastIndexOf("/");

then we find the pipe or "|":

var colonSpot:Number = swfDir.indexOf("|");

Now we are going to create and empty string and piece all that stuff together replacing the "|" with a ":".

var myUrl:String;
if(colonSpot>=0){
/*that means if we found a "|" if we didn't the colonSpot value would be -1*/
myUrl = swfDir.substring(0,colonSpot);
/*that makes our Url var = everything BEFORE the "|"*/
myUrl +=":"
/* that ads the ":" */
}else{
myUrl="";
}
myUrl+= swfDir.substring(conolSpot+1, lastSlash+1);
/* now we just added back everything after the | */

ok Now we write our getUrl() with our new variable "myUrl"

AS 2.0

myButton.onRelease = function()
{
    var targetUrl:String = myUrl + "yourfile.pdf";
    getURL(targetUrl, "_blank");
};

AS 3.0

function newGetUrl(event:MouseEvent):void{
var targetUrl:URLRequest = new URLRequest(myUrl + "myfile.pdf");
navigateToURL(targetUrl, "_blank");
}
myButton.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, newGetUrl);

That’s it, another bug work around.

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Comments

Comment #1 (Posted by Rafagd - rafagd at gmail.com)
Rating
This is not a firefox bug, it's a feature...

I'm pretty sure that the standards for the file:// protocol doesn't say anything about | being interpreted as :
Comment #2 (Posted by Christian - tantanix at gmail.com)
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It is actually a firefox bug. http://probertson.com/articles/2006/10/11/geturl-flash-projector-firefox-problem/
Comment #3 (Posted by john - johnG123 at hotmail.com)
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actually i think he was reffering to the bug being in the communication between flash/windows/and firefox, but yes it is a firefox bug!
Comment #4 (Posted by paul - paulfecht at hotmail.com)
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I would like to see an example if possible..maybe you've done that and on further inspection I will figure it out but I got a little confused. Sample file?
Comment #5 (Posted by Mark - ferreem at yahoo.com)
Rating
I'd have to agree with comment one, I would say this is an Adobe bug not a Firefox one.

From what I can gather the official uri spec calls for:

<scheme>://<authority><path>?<query>

And never mentions using a pipe character as a substitute.

Luckily Firefox is taking the initiative and fixing the problem anyway.
Comment #6 (Posted by tim - tim at ver-voort.com)
Rating
Im getting the following message:
Firefox does not know how to open. The following protocol (ttp) is not recognized by firefox. The original URL DOES contain http. Any ideas why the script is pulling the 'H' out?
Comment #7 (Posted by jim - jim.contactme at gmail.com)
Rating
Hi All,
trying to get the getURL bug to work.
since my file is just one folder deep (siteAssets/jimjohnson_resume.pdf) do I just do this:

var targetUrl:String = myUrl + "siteAssets/jimjohnson_resume.pdf";

in the fix you've given?

it's not working, and I think it's something to do with me trying to getURL to a pdf file, and not a swf/or website.

?

any thoughts appreciated,
Jim

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