ExternalInterface Problems in ActionScript 2

zedia.net — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 21:09:24 +0000

Where I work we use a lot of Javascript because the guys doing it are quite gifted and also because I am the only member of the flash department (well designers do flash, but when it gets complicated I handle it), so it is often the case where Flash has to call a Javascript function. With all of my readings I had come to the conclusion that ExternalInterface.call was the best way to access Javascript functions. I guess I was wrong…

Well first of all ExternalInterface works very badly with Opera (at least the ActionScript 2 version, haven’t tested the ActionScript 3 version). Searching a bit I found people saying the it worked sometimes, it worked when it wasn’t inside a mouse related event, etc. Well this isn’t very reliable.

Also I ran in some trouble where when the Javascript was called in the html it worked fine in all browsers, when I used ExternalInterface it worked fine in Internet Explorer, didn’t do a thing in Opera and just crashed Firefox. Well that’s nice cross-browser behavior…

To solve my problem, I just had to do it the good old way; getURL(“javascript:myFunction()”). For the same Javascript function (the one that crashed FireFox), it worked in all browser. I hope this all works better in AS3.

zedia flash blog » Opera

ExternalInterface Problems in ActionScript 2