TIP 194: Placing QuickTime and SWF Objects on a Page

You can really go a long way with HTML, CSS, and images, but adding rich media content such a QuickTime movies and SWF animations can improve a site dramatically when done appropriately. The good news is that adding this multimedia content to a page with GoLive is as easy as drag and drop. Select the .mov or .swf in the Files tab of the Site window and drag it into the Layout Editor. GoLive will automatically add the correct height and width attributes, plug-in information, and the <object> and <embed> tags to make everything work smoothly in the browsers.

Creating Clickable QuickTime Poster Frame Movies

Many Web designers choose QuickTime to deliver their multimedia content. Because of QuickTime's incredible quality, they want an impressive user experience to match. Visit Adam's tutorial at www.golivein24.com/tips/qtposter/ to learn a technique that allows the user to control when a QuickTime movie is played.

What's interesting about how GoLive handles multimedia content is the way the Inspector changes depending on the type of file you've placed. For example, when you place a QuickTime movie in a page, there's a special QuickTime tab in the Inspector that gives you one-click access to options such as showing the controller, autoplaying the movie, and looping the video (Figure 194a).

Figure 194a. Adjust QuickTime-specific attributes in the QuickTime tab of the Inspector.

When you place a Flash animation, the Inspector includes a SWF tab that lets you adjust if the animation autoplays, if it loops, the quality of the playback, and how it scales when resized (Figure 194b).

Figure 194b. Control special SWF attributes in the Inspector.

See Tip 241 to learn how to use the Detect tab in the SWF Inspector and deploy intelligent plug-in detection code.