TechNote (Archived)

A Flash movie with a space in the file name is not displaying in Netscape

Issue

An embedded Flash movie displays correctly in Internet Explorer, but does not play in Netscape Navigator. Rather than playing as expected, the movie is replaced by an empty area in Netscape's browser window.

Reason

If the embedded SWF has spaces in its file name, Netscape may not be able to locate the file. Internet Explorer reconciles spaces in file names, allowing the path to link correctly. Netscape will read a file name only until a space is encountered.

For example, a Flash movie called "my movie.swf" will be seen simply as "my" in Netscape.

Solution

Remove any spaces (you can replace them with underscores, if desired) in the SWF's file name, and update the <OBJECT> and<EMBED> tags appropriately to reflect this new name. If publishing the SWF and the HTML file using Flash's Publish feature, the easiest way to update both the file name and the HTML code is to rename the FLA file with a new name and re-export the SWF and HTML from Flash.

Additional Information

Spaces in file names can also cause Get URL and Load Movie actions to not function in Netscape. It is highly recommended to avoid using spaces in file names.

Similar issues with movies not displaying in Netscape can also be caused by improper MIME type configuration on the server. See Web server MIME types required for serving Flash movies (TechNote tn_4151) for more information on MIME types.