Have a client who engaged a web designer to redo his flash page. The designer called up to complain that his flash is not working and it MUST be the server fault. Lucky for me, the old design was still running and I just point to him the url and he is speechless. For such prob is there any analytical scripts or ways to show/determine that their script is at fault?

Wait....so the flash isnt displaying on the web but it is on his computer?
Maybe it calls things from the web and those dont work so its not working?

Also, I know that there are swf debuggers, never tried any of them though.

Originally posted by boonchuan
For such prob is there any analytical scripts or ways to show/determine that their script is at fault?

I think you already determined one way to analyze it. ;)

If the one Flash works, and the other doesn't, and its the same server, it is definitely the flash file at fault. Flash is like Java in the sense that it is almost always a client side script: The server doesn't run the script, it just stores it. There are a FEW server side flash functions, but you have to be wanting a pretty specialized flash for those to come into play (chances are you don't have the flash server extensions installed). Judging by the response from this particular flash programmer, he does not sound like he would even know how to implement the server extensions anyways.

Also: What versions are both flash files, respectively? 4,5,mx,2004? Sometimes its about the developers methods.... if he's used to 5, and tries the same in MX, it may break. Also, keep in mind that if the client does not download the proper flash plugin (usually via automatic prompt), then you wont see anything.

Finally, yes, there is a debugging method, but its the job of the developer. The debugging environment must be published into the flash, and, more importantly... heh.... the flash file has to actually work at the location to be debugged. ;)

What axx2k stated about the flash versions is probably the key to the question. A flash saved as version 7 with AS 2.0 (implementing functions specific to these new versions) will surely fail if executed on a client flash player which is v5 for example.

Also a quick check to the html object tag would be worthwhile, specially this little bit:
<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000"
codebase="htttp://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,29,0"
the swflash.cab#version here must be the correct one as well.

Last suggestion is to note which browser the tests are running under and remember that although IE understands the <object tag, NN and mozilla browsers only understand the <embed tag. Nesting the embed inside the object is the only viable solution here. Sadly doing so breaks the standards and your site will not validate xhtml with /*w3c.org*/

Oh and just in case, clear cache and refresh ;) Flash has a nasty habit of living out of cache.

Happy holidays
Juan S.