Unfortunatly when the users aborts the express install he will end up with a blank screen. Even if the user was shown the no javascript alternative content we would run into problems because of SWFAddress, which would again start the express install at the time of the next click in the navigation menu. For Fleb, this needed some rethinking.

SWFObject 2.1 together with SWFAddress 2.3
At first I wanted to upgrade to the newest SWFObject 2.2, but I ran into 2 problems. First, when I have SWFObject 2.2 installed, when I test in Firefox (3.0.13 and 3.5.2) on the PC I get a blank screen and an error in firebug: “Error calling method on NPObject“. So I switched back to SWFObject 2.1, which I have not encountered any problems on the tested browsers. And there is even another issue: The combination of SFWObject 2.2 and SWFAddress 2.3 causes FlashVars to be NULL. Read this for more info about this issue. Conclusion for the time being: I will stick to SWFObject 2.1 and SWFAddress 2.3.

expressInstall.swf changed to flebExpressInstall.swf
Here is what I did: In expressInstall.as I changed the function installStatus like this:

function installStatus(statusValue) {
switch (statusValue) {
case "Download.Complete":
// Installation is complete.
break;
case "Download.Cancelled":
getURL(baseURL+"/noflash.php");
break;
case "Download.Failed":
getURL(baseURL+"/noflash.php");
break;
}
}

If the user hits “No”, he will be rerouted to “noflash.php”, which is in fact the same page as index.php, but without SWFAddress. See the graphic below.

This page is not linked to from anywhere and has the metatags “noindex, nofollow”, so the search engines should not index it. This page is only for the user to have at least something if he cannot upgrade to the needed flash player. At the same time this is a great way to show your clients the NO FLASH version of their new flash website, without having them deactivate javascript (which they normally don’t have a clue how to do it… )

robots.txt
In this release version 1.1 of Fleb I also have added a robots.txt file, to prevent the search engines from indexing certain files. For example SWFs. Read this post for more info about SWFAddress and robots.txt.
Here is what it looks like:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /base.swf
Disallow: /main.swf
Disallow: /noflash.php
Disallow: /structure.xml
Disallow: /structure.php
Disallow: /content_source/
Disallow: /content_swf/

More improvements
Because there are now two php files that use the same info texts (index.php and noflash.php) I didn’t want to have redundant data, so I have created a new file named “noflash_text.php” with those pieces of text. Just have a look at it to see what I mean.

Making things variable
I took everything out of index.php that you had to set (e.g. flash version, background color) and placed it in structure.xml. Now you don’t have to touch the index.php file anymore, it’s all variable and defined in structure.xml. In the download files I have also added a structure.xml file that contains only one language, for you to compare.

Removed code from Main.as
I have placed all code for language handling in the navigationManager2 class, now Main.as is much clearer. The code that is left there has to be there. I mean, I could take even more code out and place it in seperate classes, but that would probably get in the way of your coding style. I want the Fleb Framework to remain as clear as possible. I have put a lot of comments in Main.as to explain every step. Please let me know if you have problems or suggestions.

You can download the Fleb Framework here.

Cheers,
Christian