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Flash Applications That Can Be Used Online and Off

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the not-just-for-shockwave-anymore dept.

General Voltron writes "Macromedia, Inc., the same people that brought you Flash, have done it again with a new product called Central. Central will allow users to more easily interact with information on the internet by also allowing them to interact with it offline. It will also allow developers to create and sell their own applications. See the press release." I'm not a big fan of Flash myself, but I realize it has its niche. This looks like something that Flash authors have been clamoring for.

1 of 257 comments (clear)

  1. Enabling and disabling Flash on-the-fly by Isthistakenyet? · · Score: 5, Informative

    My original solution to flash ads was to uninstall the flash plugin, but this meant that I couldn't view stuff like The Carabella Game: The Quest for Tunes. Then I found out that Mozilla and Phoenix can make use of plugins that are installed while the browser is running. This meant that I could load and unload the flash plugin without restarting my browser. I cooked up the following script, which was originally nicely indented:

    #!/bin/sh

    if [ $# != 1 ]; then
    echo "Usage: $0 [off|on]"
    exit
    fi

    case $1 in
    "on")
    echo "Enabling ShockWave Flash for Mozilla and Phoenix"
    ln -sf /opt/plugins/ShockwaveFlash.class \
    /opt/plugins/libflashplayer.so \
    /opt/mozilla/plugins
    ln -sf /opt/plugins/ShockwaveFlash.class \
    /opt/plugins/libflashplayer.so \
    /opt/phoenix/plugins
    ;;
    "off")
    echo "Disabling ShockWave Flash for Mozilla and Phoenix"
    rm -f /opt/mozilla/plugins/ShockwaveFlash.class \
    /opt/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so \
    /opt/phoenix/plugins/ShockwaveFlash.class \
    /opt/phoenix/plugins/libflashplayer.so
    ;;
    *)
    echo "Usage: $0 [off|on]"
    ;;
    esac

    Here's how it works: Mozilla is installed in /opt/mozilla, and Phoenix is installed in /opt/phoenix. I have a directory called /opt/plugins where I keep my plugins so they aren't lost when I install a new nightly build. When I turn Flash on, the script makes a symlink to the Flash files inside the browser's plugins directory, and when I turn Flash off, the script deletes the symlinks.

    To make this even simpler, I added the following entries to my window manager (IceWM). This way I can enable or disable flash with the click of my mouse.

    prog "Flash On" general_configuration flash on
    prog "Flash Off" general_configuration flash off