Pause flash activity

[mailpitches]

I've noticed a subtle yet cool feature in Safari and I'm wondering how
they did it. If you go to YouTube and open one of the videos in a new
tab (Command-click), the page will load in the new tab but the video
won't start loading or playing. Then if you click on the tab, the video
will start playing and loading. If you immediately click back to
another tab, the video will continue loading but will stop playing.

It seems pretty clear how Safari could stop the flash animation from
loading the first time, but how does it distinguish between preloading
activity and video-playing activity when you switch back to the other
tab? Is it possible to emulate this by interacting with the flash
animation with javascript?

I only have limited experience with Flash, which is probably why I'm
puzzled by this. I'm a programmer though so don't spare the details.

Thanks
MP

[John Thompson]

["Followup-To:" header set to alt.fan.mozilla.]
On 2006-08-19, ma*********@email.com <ma*********@email.comwrote:

I've noticed a subtle yet cool feature in Safari and I'm wondering how
they did it. If you go to YouTube and open one of the videos in a new
tab (Command-click), the page will load in the new tab but the video
won't start loading or playing. Then if you click on the tab, the video
will start playing and loading. If you immediately click back to
another tab, the video will continue loading but will stop playing.

It seems pretty clear how Safari could stop the flash animation from
loading the first time, but how does it distinguish between preloading
activity and video-playing activity when you switch back to the other
tab? Is it possible to emulate this by interacting with the flash
animation with javascript?

Yup. You can tweak Mozilla/Firefox/IE to do the same:

http://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/flash.html

--

John (jo**@os2.dhs.org)