Minimalist, versatile, corporate site template

No, you can add as many modules (form, text, gallery, external) as you like and these can be placed at any point in the site structure – including on the home page.

Also the site structure can be as ‘deep’ as you want, meaning that you can have folders, sub-folders and sub-sub-folders. The only limit is common sense and the available space on the screen.

The problem is most likely an XML file error. 95% of problems that users have are usually cleared up very easily, because the easiest thing to break is the XML files. The good news is that fixing XML files errors are not hard – because Firefox will tell you where you have gone wrong. That’s right – open up any XML file in firefox and if there is a syntax error (aka ‘a mistake’) Firefox will tell you what it is and where to find it.

Other XML gotchas are:

• id’s must be unique. In index.xml do you have many nodes with the same id=”idname” ? This will cause problems because anything looking for the id=”idname” will be confused. For example this id imight be used in an XML page for an Index module to determine that an img with idname get’s the big feature image spot – if there are seven nodes in index.xml each with id=”idname” then chaos ensues.
• each module must have it’s own xml file. each page in your template will be subtly different so don’t use the same pagename.xml file for another page.
• any <index> that has children must have a corresponding </index> – this is standard XML syntax, a.k.a “well formedness” (opening index.xml in Firefox will tell you if you have broken the XML syntax). Firefox is also useful for browsing your xml file as you can collapse and expand nodes to more easily scan a big file.
• double check your image or other file paths – if a path to an image is wrong th image will not load. A great way to check is to run the application in Flash rather than the browser. Open init.fla and hit Ctrl + Enter. In the output window it will list any Errors for url not found.
• illegal characters. You cant use html entities like & < > ” in XML attributes. If you open an XML file in Firefox with one of these it will display an error message. Instead use html entity codes like & < > or ”. The full list is here: http://htmlhelp.com/reference/html40/entities/latin1.html

It is possible to run the template from Flash, allowing you to debug and use trace(). Some trace errors are included in the classes when obvious errors are made, like invalid navigation requests for example.

To test, you will need to uncomment some code in src/minMain.fla that creates a loader instance. This is the task that is usually handled by init.fla. You will of course also need to change the publish location so that when you hit Ctrl + Enter Flash publishes the movie where it can find all the data files.

Working locally, if you see the Security Alert from Adobe, this is because the template communicates with the javascript files in www/js. There are a couple of things you can do to prevent this, that should work:

• set allowscript access to always. To do this with SWFObject v2 follow this guide: http://code.google.com/p/swfobject/wiki/documentation#How_do_you_use_Objects_to_define_your_flashvars,_params_and_obje
  (make sure you copy the whole url – as this takes you to a specific part of the page titled: “How do you use JavaScript Objects to define your flashvars, params and object’s attributes?”)
• specify your location as ok (on mac you may have to add localhost to your URL , eg file://localhost/Users/ instead of file:///Users/, to disable the popup blocker)

If this doesn’t work, I encourage you to test locally on a server (Personal Web Server on windows and Web Sharing on mac), or if you have to, simply test in a secure or hidden part of your website. You are building a website after all so it’s important to test in as realistic environment as possible.

I use a mac and zip with the standard osx compression software.

There is this message on the download page though that may help:

If you are having trouble with ‘corrupt’ or ‘missing files’ in ZIP files, we suggest you try using WinAce to try and extract the files.

“People who have reported these problems have had success when using WinAce. Please try this before contacting support, posting comments, forum threads or negative ratings!”

A few more suggestions in this thread.

http://flashden.net/forums/thread/if-youre-having-trouble-opening-zip-files/578?page=1

If you still can’t open maybe ask support as well, If this happens to you it has probably happened to lots of others too

Have you changed the ActionScript code or customised the FLAs in any way?

If yes:

- Make a list of all the things you changed. Make these changes to the new version, republish the swfs and the follow the process as below.

If no:

- replace your /src and init.swf main.swf with the new files
– make any customisations (like adding fonts) to the new src files
- update your data with any items that you want to use from the update – eg add a form or gallery page by following the exampe in the new updated files.
- if the update has any changes to other items in www like the .js or .php files then you should also replace these
- if the update has any new features that you want to use, then follow the examples of how these are done in the new demo and edit your project to match these.

Yes the folder sructure is important. The com folders are divided into the generic template code that I use for all my projects and the specific code that is for this template. Having these separate makes it much easier for me to organise the code in my source repository

Where do the SWFs get published?

I have set up the FLA files so that the SWF files are published to the www folder. This is done in File -> Publish Settings. You will see that main.fla is set to publish to:

../www/main.swf

If you move the folders around you will need to change this. I have set this up this way so that all source code is out of the www folder but so that you can still test from within flash using Ctrl + Enter.

Most likely you have not embedded the font, or the font name you are using in CSS is incorrect. See the next FAQ and the section on fonts in the main documentation.

Fonts in my templates are handled with Font Symbols or they can be embedded directly in main.fla.

Option 1 – Font Symbols

1. open main.fla
2. open the library
3. find the font symbols that I have put there and select one
4. Select ‘properties’ from the library menu (or click the info button)
5. Choose the font you want to use and click OK
6. Notice how to the right of the first font symbol named __PixelFont (for example) in the ‘linkage’ column I have given the font an ‘Identitifier’ of __PixelFont too. This is what you use in the css file eg: .nav{font-family: __PixelFont;}
7. If you want to be organised and rename the Identifier to the name of your new font then in the library select the font symbol and choose Linkage from the Library menu. Remember to always name it with two underscores so that the template knows to set embedded fonts for each TextField that uses it.

Option 2 – Embed fonts directly into main.fla (Use for non Latin languages eg: Greek)

1. In main.fla (frame 1 layer 2) is a TextField, select the font you want to embed in the properties window for this TextField. Of course the font must have the characters for the language you need.
2. Select the “Embed..” button on the right of the properties window.
3. Choose the languages you want to support, don’t forget to add the numerals too if you need these – also I found with Aristarcoj i had to manually type a space in the “Include these characters” box to make spaces work. It might be a good idea to just add basic latin to your selections to be safe… eg if in the middle of the greek text you want to use an english word. To select multiple items just hold down the Command key (Mac) or Ctrl (PC – I think) whilst clicking the character sets you want.
4. If you want to embed more than one font then add another textfield and repeat steps 2 and 3 for each TextField.
5. Republish main.fla
6. Open the file www/data/init.xml
7. Add to the <theme> node each font you have embedded. Separate multiple fonts with a comma.
8. It’s very important that your font names are spelled correctly in the init.xml file and the CSS file – they should match exactly the name that you selected in the TextField properties box.
9. To check what characters you have embedded you can set flash to publish a report. In File-> Publish Settings on the Flash tab choose “Generate Size Report”. When you publish this will make a txt file with info on your swf.

More info on fonts is in the main documentation

Many fonts do not have special characters, even very popular fonts like Helvetica and Arial. For example in Turkish the S has a loop at the bottom the called a cedilla. The common embedded font I often use’Helvetica Neue’ doesn’t have these in it’s character set, but that is no problem. I have a few helveticas on my mac and Helvetica CE works fine. Of course I imagine that if you are interested n publishing your project to suit a specific language then you would have quite a few fonts more than I that have special characters for that language.

Basically with special characters there are very few fonts that have every single character from every single language so you need to choose the one that suits whatever language you are trying to support.

Yes, put other versions of the site in a different folder and provide links to them.

Also note that handling multiple foreign languages in one swf is not easy as very few fonts are designed for multiple languages. See “Foreign characters not showing” above for more info.

The site opens up the first page, and because your first page is a folder – that opens – so the site navigates to the first ‘sub’ page. Can you add another page that is the home so that loads first?

This is most likely because you don’t have the font embedded. Set the navigation to arial. In CSS change this:

.nav{font-family:__HelveticaNeue;} (or whatever font is set there)

To this

.nav{font-family:Arial;}

If the navigation then appears it proves that the trouble is with the embedded font. If not the next step is to open the index.xml in firefox – are there any errors?

Use the html form supplied in the php folder first to test if it is an issue with the flash file. If the html form also does not work then you probably have a sevrer that will not send out email. The best bet is to talk to your web host.

A lot of servers won’t do this with the php mail() function – basically a lot of spam originates this way so many network admins block all mail that comes from a php mail() send. There are plenty of more complex scripts on the market that you can use instead that are low cost:

For example http://www.formmail.com/

Read this blog post – http://mbudm.com/2009/06/16guide-to-adding-image-gallery/ It covers this process..

This is the most likely answer – add the components to the template SWF as well.

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/192/tn_19278.html

First make sure the externalDemo.swf and the video plays on the server outside of the template – just to make sure video works on your server.

Then, try putting the externalDemo.swf in the root folder and change the XML to match this new location (url=”externalDemo.swf instead of url=”swfs/externalDemo.swf”).

As well as FLV , MPEG compressed videos also work. These extension types are acceptable.

flv, mpeg, mp4, m4v, m4a, mov, 3gp

However they only work if they are the newer type mpeg 4 – H.264 encoding. Also you must at least have Flash Player 9 Update 3 (v 9.0.115.0) that was released on December 3, 2007.

If your logo is a very sharp image then it will not handle resizing very well. Set the size of the logo (the width) to the same as what is in the init.xml <logo logowidth=”” > and all should be well. The resizing ability in these templates is really designed for users who have a logo that is a vector – a swf. Bitmap files like png and jpg should not generally be resized.

Use html entities for ™ © ® unfortunately SM is not in the list of standard html entities:

http://htmlhelp.com/reference/html40/entities/latin1.html

So you’d need to do this with CSS – problem is there is no CSS selector that works in Flash to ‘superscript’ the text. So the only solution is to use a superscript font for those two letters. See this tutorial:

http://blog.ggshow.com/index.php/reference/2007/04/19/how_to_use_subscript_aamp_superscript_in

Change the title in the index.php or index.html – it takes a split second for the javascript to get the proper name out of the xml file.

A plain background is achieved by having no background image. To change this just add a background image like the other pages that have them. if you want the default no background to be another color then change this in the html code for the embedded swf.

var params = {menu:false,allowFullScreen:true,bgcolor:’#FFFFFF’};

Of course the background is also changeable by loading in different background images too – as explained in the documentation

Are you testing locally? If so you are encountering the Adobe Security model (see the faq titled ‘Problems testing locally in the browser’ for more info).

Always test your web site on a server to get realistic results.

Here are the attributes you can add to url nodes in index.xml:

External links (<page type=”url” > or <url> )

• window : If you want the link to open up in the same window, then don’t specify anything here (the default is “_self” ). To open in a new window make window=”_blank”. See the Flash help docs on getURL for information on acceptable values.
• method : Rarely required. See the Flash help docs on getURL for information on acceptable values.