I haven’t had to deal with Flash 5 in a while, but you should never put variant parameters (those that change a lot) as query strings on the actual load of your app. I updated my post with a way of doing this with a proxy swf that gets around the issue.

It is only available on flash v6+ So for anyone still having to do a flash 5 project ( for whatever reason), you have to use the query string method. If I know I am targeting the to the widest audience, I include flashVars as well as a querystring in the object/embed tags.

Right. In the main movie if you are loading assets you have to have a versioning scheme or something to force updates of assets as they face all the same issues. I use a unique ID on all data requests internal to the base swf to ensure clean requests when I need to. During internal dev and testing, unique requests are fine. Versioning and caching becomes more of an issue in a high profile production environment. For example, on CNN.com I may have an app that I put out there, but 3 months later they add features to it. I use the versioning system to enforce it caches, but it updates on clients when I add the new release with its versioning. I couldn’t have it not cache because I need the efficiency of the base caching. Of course, all this I’m describing depends on what you are doing and who you are serving to.

PS. why the Math.random()*100 on your call? new Date().getTime() returns a unique millisecond # which should be sufficient, what’s the extra expression for?

http://www.richardleggett.co.uk/downloads/flash/CacheKiller/CacheKiller.as

So I use it like this:

var subs_array = ["one.swf", "two.swf"];
if (CacheKiller.isOnline()) CacheKiller.fixArray(subs_array);

Seems to work quite well, but it does suffer from the “always having to reload content” issue, however I usually find the main site/navigation (which IS version controlled) is the heftiest in terms of kB’s anyway, so no big issue


my_mc.loadMovie("myMovie.swf?rn="+new Date().getTime()+(Math.random()*100))


Kenny, very true, but during development this is not an issue. Its also an issue that is merley a shortcoming if you actually want to ensure that people always see the latest content/application/flash movie on your website. You have to weigh up the pro’s and the con’s and decide which way to go.

Also remember that this can be done with any type of content, including movies, sounds and images both inside of flash and in html.

Exactly. Mod date is a smart method to automate to. I sync mine with the CVS version just so I can look and have a visual indicator to know which version is out there. It’s a personal preference, but you definitely get the point.

That way you wouldnt have to worry about versioning your swf by hand, good idea?

Good point about writing out the object/embed with js. I actually have a custom js class that I use to write out all my .swfs. However, be careful with using a unique # everytime in the embed code. The reason I say this is server and client efficiency. For the server, if you are having to serve the same file everytime and noone is caching it, and you have tons of concurrent requests your server is going to have to do more especially if the files are large. More importantly, (and I forgot to mention in my post, which I’ll probably edit in) if the client has a slow connection, say 56k and the file is 150kb which I consider to be large they will have to wait to download it each time they visit your site. On the other hand if it is cached on a version basis then they can use a cached version of the base .swf and only load ondemand needed items in the .swf. Make sense?

It’s good practice, to write out your object/embed tags with javascript during development, and append a unique string to the query string to ensure visitors always see the latest release. Especially when you have testers, checking the application while your building it.

"mymovie.swf?rn="+new Date().getTime()+(Math.random()*100)

*/