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:
- The <object> tag (outermost tag) says the dimensions of the flash movie are 275 X 225
- The <embed> tag (innermost tag) says the dimensions of the flash movie are 325 X 275
- Neither tag agrees with the other in terms of dimensions
- To my eye, the flash movie looks like it has a 4:3 aspect ratio which is 1.33
- 325 X 275 is an aspect ratio of 1.18
- 275 X 225 is an aspect ratio of 1.22
- 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:
- Bring up the web page with the flash movie embedded in it using Internet Explorer 8
- Press Shift-Print-Screen under Windows XP to capture the screen in front of you
- At this point, my entire screen capture has been saved to the clipboard
- Launch Gimp 2.8
- When Gimp comes up, type Control-V to paste the captured screen to gimp
- 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.
- Press lower-case r to choose the rectangular selection tool
- Use your mouse to select all four corners of the flash movie precisely
- Type Control-C to copy the flash movie to the clipboard.
- Click on gimp to bring focus back to gimp
- Type Shift-Control-V to paste the clipboard image into a brand new image in gimp
- 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.
