TechNote (Archived)

Issues with the Macromedia Flash Player 5

Player compatibility

Backwards compatibility of newer versions of the Macromedia Flash Player with older Flash file formats is a top priority for each new player version. The public beta release of the Macromedia Flash Player 5 in July 2000 is one of the ways that Macromedia has tried to ensure backwards compatibility of the Flash Player 5 with Flash files created in Flash 4 and earlier. However, compatibility issues have emerged. Macromedia is aware of these issues, and is currently addressing them for a future release of the player.

Some differences in playback performance and appearance may be encountered when movies created for previous players are played back in the Flash Player 5. This document lists these differences and offers workarounds where applicable. Some of these workarounds require opening the original FLA file in Flash and re-exporting the SWF file.

If you are experiencing trouble with the Macromedia Flash Player 5, please read through all the information below. It may not be obvious that a listed item is the cause of a particular symptom or issue. Some issues may cause a variety of unexpected behaviors, and some similar behaviors may have a variety of causes.

Some of these issues are related to names of objects, which can be prevented and resolved by sticking to some basic naming conventions. For guidelines on naming Flash objects and variables refer to Naming strategies for Flash (TechNote 14727).

Known issues with the Flash Player 5

Frame rate

Movies that have been set with a high frame rate (30-120 frames per second) may have a faster or more dramatic fluctuation in frame rate.

The default frame rate in the Macromedia Flash Player 4 was 15 frames per second, with a maximum achievable frame rate of 18 frames per second. Macromedia Flash Player 5 will now try to achieve this higher frame rate whenever possible.

To prevent this, set the frame rate of the movie close to the actual target rate. Use the default 15 to maximum 18 frames per second as a guideline.

System resources

Movies that have been set with a high frame rate (30-120 frames per second) may consume more system resources (CPU cycles).

The Macromedia Flash Player 5 will try to achieve higher frame rates than previous players. One result of this is a machine may be forced to work too hard to achieve this higher frame rate, reducing overall system performance.

To prevent this, set the frame rate of the movie close to the actual target rate. Use 15 to 18 frames per second as a guideline.

Goto action not working correctly with expressions

A goTo action will fail if the argument is an expression, and if the first character resolves to a number. The player incorrectly interprets the action and goes to the frame number corresponding to the first character.

This is not expected behavior. For a complete explanation and example, refer to Goto actions may not work with expressions in Macromedia Flash Player 5 (TechNote 14719)

To prevent this, ensure the first character of the expression used in the goTo action does not resolve to a number.

Objects, variables have the same names

This issue may cause a variety of different erratic behaviors. Among these are loss of functionality of scrolling text fields, and inability to get or set properties of movie clip objects.

To prevent this issue, make sure each object (instance, variable, text field) in the movie has it's own, completely unique name.

Names contain special characters

This issue may cause a wide variety of different erratic behaviors. Among these are loss of functionality of scrolling text fields, incorrect appearance of text in fields, and inability to get or set properties of movie clip objects.

In order to prevent this, avoid using special characters (such as ":", or, "/") in variable names, frame labels, or movie clip instance names.

I-beam cursor not visible

In the Macromedia Flash Player 5, the blinking bar that indicates cursor position defaults to black. If the field is on a black background, the cursor cannot be seen.

If the I-beam cursor must be visible, choose a background color that will enable the black cursor to be seen.

Note: The cursor happened to take on the text color in earlier players. This undocumented feature will be restored in a future version of the player.

Text artifacts

There are several potential issues concerning text fields: text in text fields may display where not intended; text from lower level movies may "bleed" through to higher level movies; dragged items may leave text behind; text may appear partially outside the bounding box.

If text artifacts are left behind from dragged items, edit the object and create a border of content around the text to work around this issue.

Scrolling of a text variable jumps back to its original position

The .scroll value of a text variable is reset to the original value or 1 when a data source is changed and reloaded. For more information refer to Scroll property of text field reset on data load (Technote 14716).