You are building an application in Flash that needs to open several different file types (spreadsheets, PDFs, presentations, executables etc), but in order to make the application as smooth as possible, you need to check for the existence of applications that handle the types of files you are trying to open, and act accordingly. The article source files can be downloaded by clicking here. The information presented in this article should give you the inspiration to explore the possibilities of Flash and Director integration, and give you a taste of what you can achieve with a little imagination and flair. In this article, we’ll look at how, by integrating Flash and Director, we can query the operating system on which the application runs, return information and make decisions based on that data. But there are times when Flash on its own just doesn’t cut the mustard, and needs a little more horsepower to accomplish the desired effect.

When you are looking to create educational reference material, presentations, CD-ROMs or complicated applications, Flash will (depending on the complexity of the project) usually fulfil the needs of the brief. Yet, there comes a time when you may need a little more control of system-related functions such as being able to detect the operating system the user is using, launching external programs, detecting default file handling applications and controlling system windows - especially when creating distributed applications. There are no two ways about it: Flash MX 2004 is a powerful development environment for creating fun and engaging applications.

How to open macromedia projector file