Why doesn't onClick work for Flash Text?

[LisaS77]

I'm a newbie to Dreamweaver and web development and need assistance. I have
multiple layers on a form and wish to show/hide layers using the onClick event
of Flash Text. In searching the forums I have learned that there is a free
extension to do this, however, I remain curious about why the onclick event is
not recognized in the browser. The show/hide layers behavior in the behavior
panel works just fine on mouseover and mouse out, unfortunately I want it to
work onclick! I have the same issue with Flash Buttons. What's the deal?

Related question: I've had some success using javascript and the DOM to
control objects on the page. If I insert a javascript command to set onclick
to run a custom function and place the script command after the HTML
instantiation of the layer object, would this be successful?

[darrel]

Post by LisaS77
multiple layers on a form and wish to show/hide layers using the onClick event
of Flash Text.

You can't. 'Flash Text' is an embedded object. As such, it's not really a
part of the page that javascript or HTML can 'see'. Any clicking in the
flash file is trapped by the flash browser plug-in so the html page doesn't
even register the click.

If you want to show/hide layers via the flash text, then you need to open up
the flash text inside of Flash and create a button in flash with the
javascript there.

-Darrel

[LisaS77]

Interesting. I used the Dreamweaver MX 2004 Flash Text feature to create the
flashtext so there isn't (to my knowledge) a source flash file to work from.
Interesting also that the Behaviors panel offers the onClick event for the
Flash Text object and surrounds it with the embed tags, which I would have
thought would allow the object to respond to onclick. No can do, however. So,
to clarify, what native HTML objects WILL respond to onClick within the
Dreamweaver interface?

[Greg Ludington]

Post by LisaS77
Interesting. I used the Dreamweaver MX 2004 Flash Text feature to create the
flashtext so there isn't (to my knowledge) a source flash file to work from.

Look in your code view, or select the Flash Text in Design View and look at
the properites. Dreamweaver is creating a Flash movie for you, such as
"text1.swf" to display your text. Since it is a Flash movie, that object
has first choice what to do with the click, and how (or if) to pass it on to
the browser.

[Mick White]

Double click the Flash Text.
In link area write:
javascript:yourFunction(yourParameters;anyOtherFunctionOrJSStatements)

If your parameters are strings, enclose them in single quotes:

javascript:yourFunction('yourStringParameters',yourJsVariable)

example:
javascript:alert('The year is '+new Date().getFullYear())

Mick

Post by LisaS77
I'm a newbie to Dreamweaver and web development and need assistance. I have
multiple layers on a form and wish to show/hide layers using the onClick event
of Flash Text. In searching the forums I have learned that there is a free
extension to do this, however, I remain curious about why the onclick event is
not recognized in the browser. The show/hide layers behavior in the behavior
panel works just fine on mouseover and mouse out, unfortunately I want it to
work onclick! I have the same issue with Flash Buttons. What's the deal?
Related question: I've had some success using javascript and the DOM to
control objects on the page. If I insert a javascript command to set onclick
to run a custom function and place the script command after the HTML
instantiation of the layer object, would this be successful?

[LisaS77]

Mick -- YES! You got it in one. Thanks!

In case anyone else ever looks this post up for reference, let me explain what
I did:

I wanted to have a list of courses using a custom font that when the list
elements were clicked would display a layer containing text and other objects
particular to the selected course. I decided on Flash Text because it allows
embedded fonts that are not browser dependent and also responds to mouseover
events and of course onclick. As Mick suggested, I dbl clicked on the flash
text object and typed in javascript: myfunctionname in the link field. I did
not need to write a function for this as DW provides a behavior for show/hide
layers. I simply called the DW script from the link function, provided it with
the appropriate arguments and set the target to _top. Voila! Works like a
charm.

I was halfway to another solution as well, using a null hyperlink. In this
case, I used an inline CSS to remove the underline and change the text color of
the link. Next, I added the behavior from the behavior panel and attached it
to the onclick event. This worked very well too, but of course I needed to
then write mouseover and mouseout functions to create rollover effects for the
text. All this was fine, but I was still stuck with browser installed fonts --
yuck.

Cheers Mick!

[Mick White]

No problem...
Mick

Post by LisaS77
Mick -- YES! You got it in one. Thanks!
In case anyone else ever looks this post up for reference, let me explain what
I wanted to have a list of courses using a custom font that when the list
elements were clicked would display a layer containing text and other objects
particular to the selected course. I decided on Flash Text because it allows
embedded fonts that are not browser dependent and also responds to mouseover
events and of course onclick. As Mick suggested, I dbl clicked on the flash
text object and typed in javascript: myfunctionname in the link field. I did
not need to write a function for this as DW provides a behavior for show/hide
layers. I simply called the DW script from the link function, provided it with
the appropriate arguments and set the target to _top. Voila! Works like a
charm.
I was halfway to another solution as well, using a null hyperlink. In this
case, I used an inline CSS to remove the underline and change the text color of
the link. Next, I added the behavior from the behavior panel and attached it
to the onclick event. This worked very well too, but of course I needed to
then write mouseover and mouseout functions to create rollover effects for the
text. All this was fine, but I was still stuck with browser installed fonts --
yuck.
Cheers Mick!