Category: Ryan’s Internet Technology, and Web Design Blog

There are times when you might want to change your default browser; especially if you are a developer and want to make sure that something works as it should with both IE and Firefox.

To change your default browser:

• Go to: Start/Control Panels/Add or Remove Programs
• Click on "Set Program Access and Defaults", the last button in the left-hand nav
• Click on the "Custom" set of options
• You will see an expanded list of items, Web Browser, E-mail Program, etc.

If you have ever tried to do a simple getURL() command in Flash from an .exe projector you’ll notice that it fails when Firefox is your default browser.

Following is the solution to the problem in both AS 2.0 and AS 3.0

Here’s the code for the fix in AS 2.0:

// code on a keyframe on the main timeline

var swfUrl:String = _root._url;
var lastSlashIndex:Number = swfUrl.lastIndexOf("/");
var pipeIndex:Number = swfUrl.indexOf("|");
var baseUrl:String;
if (pipeIndex >= 0)
{
    baseUrl 

Here’s a quick how to on running Firefox 2 and 3 at the same time under Windows

1. Right click the shortcut of the Firefox 2, click "Properties". Add "-profilemanager" at the end of the shortcut path. Click OK. Then run this shortcut to launch Firefox Profile Manager.
2. Create a new profile, name it "firefox3". And uncheck the "Don’t ask at startup"
3. Go to Properties of the Firefox 2 shortcut again, remove the "-profilemanager" and add "-p default" at the end

Here is a code snippet used to center a form on the screen.

Private Sub Form_Load()
    ‘ Centering the form on the screen
    Me.Move (Screen.Width – Me.Width) \ 2, (Screen.Height – Me.Height) \ 2
End Sub→ Continue reading “VB6, Centering a Form on the Screen”

The following VB6 code will open an external file with it’s associated application.  This assumes that there is an application on the system that is already associated with a specific executable.
Under your General Declarations:

‘ Runs an external file/launches it’s associated app
Private Declare Function ShellExecute Lib "shell32.dll" Alias "ShellExecuteA" (ByVal hWnd As Long, ByVal lpOperation As String, ByVal lpFile As String, ByVal lpParameters As String, ByVal lpDirectory As String, ByVal nShowCmd As Long) As Long

On whatever Form/Button/Event→ Continue reading “VB6 Code for Openning an External File”

Here is a quick tutorial on how to create MovieClips that act like buttons using ActionScript 2.0.  Attached is a sample .fla file with a complete, working example.

1. Create a new Flash document for AS 2.0
2. Create whatever graphic/shape that you would like and convert it to a symbol.  Double click on on it with the selection tool, and then press F8 to open the create symbol dialog box, or right click on it and select "Create Symbol".  Make sure

The following is a quick tutorial on how to create a hybrid CD under Mac OS X.
Using Toast, you can fairly easily create a hybrid CD with which the Mac OS will only see Mac specific files and the PC OS will only see the PC specific files.  This preserves the Mac resource fork and icon data as well as the PC icon data.

1. Create a disk image into which you will place all of your Mac OS files.

Macromedia Studio 8 shipped with Macromedia FlashPaper 2.0, a pretty cool app that will take PDF and other documents and convert them into .swf files that you can load into other flash/swf applications.

The following is a quick tutorial on how to load FlashPaper swf files into Flash applications in ActionScript 2.0.

This tutorial assumes that you know the basics of FlashPaper 2.0 and have a usable FlashPaper .swf file.

Essentially, you will include an ActionScript file that will provide → Continue reading “Using FlashPaper .swf files in ActionScript 2.0”

Following is a list of top e-mail providers and a link to their mailserver whitelist application.

• AOL
• Yahoo

The NullSoft Scriptable Installer System is a great open source package for building Windows installers.  Recently I found an open source editor/IDE package that makes putting these things together a real snap!

First download the NSIS package and install.  Then download and install HM NIS Edit and you should be all set.→ Continue reading “NSIS Installer Maker and the HM NIS Edit IDE”