How to Find Flash Movie Dimensions

I'm currently working on a website where I'm trying to figure out the actual dimensions of a flash movie in Internet Explorer 8 under Windows XP. It's been difficult.

The flash movie, codewise, consists of an <embed> tag contained inside of an <object> tag. This is a common technique. If the <object> tag does not work, then the <embed> tag is tried next.

In other words, the browser works its way from the outermost tag to the innermost tag. If no tag work, the browser gives up. This behavior of working from the outermost to the innermost tag, trying to get embedded content to work, has been part of the specification for HTML for over 10 years now.

Trying to determine the dimensions of the flash movie by looking at the code has 7 apparent problems:

1. The <object> tag (outermost tag) says the dimensions of the flash movie are 275 X 225
2. The <embed> tag (innermost tag) says the dimensions of the flash movie are 325 X 275
3. Neither tag agrees with the other in terms of dimensions
4. To my eye, the flash movie looks like it has a 4:3 aspect ratio which is 1.33
5. 325 X 275 is an aspect ratio of 1.18
6. 275 X 225 is an aspect ratio of 1.22
7. Neither the <embed> tag ratio nor the <object> tag ratio makes any sense visually in terms of what I'm seeing on my computer screen.

What to do. What to do. When I did a web search for a solution, I came across the following web page:

How to find dimensions of original swf flash movie?

Which inspired me to search for this page:

How do i take a screenshot with internet explorer??

What a great great suggestion! Of course, just do a screenshot and then measure dimensions from there. So easy!

Here's the steps I took to measure my screen capture of the flash movie:

1. Bring up the web page with the flash movie embedded in it using Internet Explorer 8
2. Press Shift-Print-Screen under Windows XP to capture the screen in front of you
3. At this point, my entire screen capture has been saved to the clipboard
4. Launch Gimp 2.8
5. When Gimp comes up, type Control-V to paste the captured screen to gimp
6. In my case, the entire screen is 1024 X 768. Therefore, the image that pastes to gimp is 1024 X 768. Whatever size computer monitor you have will be the size of the image in its entirety.
7. Press lower-case r to choose the rectangular selection tool
8. Use your mouse to select all four corners of the flash movie precisely
9. Type Control-C to copy the flash movie to the clipboard.
10. Click on gimp to bring focus back to gimp
11. Type Shift-Control-V to paste the clipboard image into a brand new image in gimp
12. Observe the dimensions of the image as displayed in the title bar at the top of the image.

The lesson? There's always a simple way. You just have to find it.

Figuring Out What Software Created Your Website

It used to be easier to figure out what software created a website. The following steps used to work:

1. Look for some text on the site that can be progressively highlighted. That is to say, you can progressively highlight one word in a sentence without necessarily highlighting the next word in the sentence.
2. Right click on some text on the site
3. Observe that a menu pops up
4. Look at the menu for an item that allows you to view the HTML for the website, also known as the source code.
5. choose View Source from the menu or something that sounds similar to View Source
6. Type CNTRL-F to find what you are looking for in the HTML of the website
7. Observe that a search box pops up
8. Type the word generator in the search box. You will be looking for each occurrence of the word generator in the HTML
9. Search for the word generator by hitting enter or whatever it takes to get the search started
10. When the search lands on a line that has a meta tag in it, you've found the software that has generated the webpage. Often the software will have both a name and a version number

That's the old way of doing things. While the above steps might work, I find HTML generators of all kinds --- HTML editors, site buiders, etc. --- are increasingly hiding who there are.

So, now it takes a bit of detective work to find out.

Drag and Drop Builder

Looks like Tucows has something called Drag and Drop Builder on their site. I've been able to identify a site built by Drag and Drop Builder by identifying the word DragndDropBuilder in the source code.

It appears to me that Godaddy uses a site builder called Website Tonight.

Either these site builders are proprietary to the web hosting companys named above or they are products that are offered at multiple hosting companies. I'm not sure which.

In any case, site builder software does tend to tie you to a specific hosting company.

Ed Abbott

Money and Website Repair

 

Here's an email I recently received:

I am currently going to school for
web development, a change from my
current career as a General Contractor.

I know this is a rather personal
question and I do not mean to be
rude but I was wondering if you
could tell me about how much money
you make with your websites and
as a web developer?

I was not willing to tell him how
much money I make as I consider that
to be personal. I'm not someone who
like to share personal information
with strangers.

In writing back I said the following:

How to Be a Contract Programmer

In general, I find that the one way
to survive as a sole proprietor is to
develop synergies. Figure out things
that go together.

If you are doing several things, all
of which work together and which feed
each other, you are likely to succeed.

Ed Abbott