The current Flash 4.0 version of the banner doesn't display any links. This will be fixed as soon as I re-code the Flash 5.0 version to Flash 4.0.

Using the Banner

To use the banner on your page follow these simple steps.

  1. Rename your .html page to .shtml (this allows server side includes)
  2. Copy the javascript include statement to your head tags
  3. Copy the flash include statement to where you want the banner to appear
  4. Construct a settings file for the page
  5. Add a onload statement to the inside of the body statement

Templates

Right click and save this link for a template shtml file. Look for <!-- edit here --> tags and change the content of the next line.
If you'd prefer a stripped down template here's (right click, save) the bare necessities.

Copy the javascript include statement to your head tags

Embed the following between the head tags i.e. <head> <!-- paste here --> </head>.
<!--#include virtual="/home/slip0102A/assets/menu/flashJS.inc" -->

Copy the flash include statement to where you want the banner to appear

Embed the following code where you which the banner to appear (i.e. somewhere between the body tags).
<!--#include virtual="/home/slip0102A/assets/menu/flashHTML.inc" -->

Construct a settings file for the page

Now decide the title and which URLs you would like the banner to use and place text in a file like this:
&title=The+Title&
&redTitle=THE+PROJECT&
&redURL=/home/slip0102A/main.shtml&
&blueTitle=NEWS REPORTS&
&blueURL=/home/slip0102A/news.shtml&
&greenTitle=DEVELOPERS&
&greenURL=/home/slip0102A/develop&
&yellowTitle=CONTACTS&
&yellowURL=/home/slip0102A/contact.shtml&
&urlsLoaded=101&

 

  • The text must be in the standard MIME format application/x-www-urlformencoded. Click here for an explanation.
  • All URLs must be absolute or site root relative. Click here for an explanation of these terms.
  • The final line should be exactly as it appears i.e. &urlsLoaded=101&.
  • The titles should be alpha numerical strings (don't make them too long or they'll be cut off). Other characters include '&', '@', '.', and '''. Additional characters can be added on request but providing the entire font doubles the movie size.

You can view an example settings file here.

I have used new lines for each variable to make it more readable. You don't need to, as long as whatever form you use ends in &urlsLoaded=101&.

&title=The Title&redTitle=DCS&redURL=http://www.dcs.ed.ac.uk&urlsLoaded=101&

You can specify up to 4 URLs and titles at the moment (red, blue, green & yellow) but I plan to expand this to up to 6 additional sub links per main link in version 0.8x.
The current version of the banner is 0.74 (you can see which version is currently being displayed by moving the mouse to the upper right hand corner). Flash 4 version numbers are in the form X.XXo and will lag behind the Flash 5.0 versions.

Add a onload statement to the inside of the body statement

The final step is to put your settings file in your web directory and add one of the following onload statements inside the BODY tag.

e.g. <body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" leftmargin="0" topmargin="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" onLoad="loadSettings('/home/slip0102A/default.set')">

This version loads the settings file at <file URL>.
onLoad="loadSettings('<file URL>')"

This version loads the settings file but replaces the title with <new title>
onLoad="replaceTitle('<new title>', '<file URL>')"

This version just sets the title to <title>.
onLoad="justTitle('<title>')"

That's it, any enhancements I make to the banner files will be reflected over the entire site and the above instructions should always be backwards compatible.

 

Here are the Flash 5 .fla files used to create the banner. The loader Detects the browser version and loads the appropriate version.
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Copyright © 2002 James Brown
Last Updated Mon, 13/5/02