By now, the @d:Tech event had started in San Francisco. Going thru' their Exhibitor Listing, seems pretty interesting & exciting. Missing you guy there on the Floor. But these kinda events, actually kindles a lot of exciting possibilities in the future of online & digital interactive advertising. If you are an interactive planner or marketer, move straight to their website to know more and feel the future !!

After a week & a half of battle, finally, i found the answer to open native applications from flash. This question was boiling me for days for a client. I found the answers from one of the unknown flash site. There are many tutorials about how to open a .pdf or .avi file in flash boards, but none of them has a tutorial for opening the native application itself, say Acrobat Reader or QuickTime Player.

The solution is like this.

There are 2 parts in this solution. 1. Non-flash Part 2.Flash Part. First, let's know the non-flash part. Windows Environment comes with a magic genie called ".bat" files. The famous example of a bat file is your autorun file. Now get into the code.

1. Open a notepad file
2. Type the following
@echo off - - - - - - - - - - - This turns off the ugly (?!) Dos window once it finished its work.
Start AcroRd32.exe - - - - - This is the code for the app. I used the file name as represented inside the Acrobat folder [AcroRd32.exe]
3. Save this file as "launcher.bat"
4. Put this inside the folder named "fscommand" [Flash MX] or in the same folder [Flash-5] where your swf resides.

Flash Part.

Write the following code in a button or MC

fscommand ("exec", "launcher.bat")

Wait and look for your Acrobat Reader opening.

Seems simple na....took a week to find out :-)

This article on Evolt brought a real smile in the face. This is the sum of all 6 years exp. in this industry. Damn good article to refer to if you are a interactive marketer. Click here

Today's Read: Listrack - a decent email marketing & campaign solution provider

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Worth reading: Wanna customize your windows OS 9X/2K/NT....if u dont have anything to do and can tinker around the shell of Windows, head straight here for cool shell imaginery
Virtual Plastic

May be we can use the same stuff for desktop & in-store branding. spare a thought!!