Technical Help .SWF File

Someone has sent me a .SWF file. It's a short showreel animation completed in Flash. I've downloaded Macromedia Flash Player 9 (again) but I still cannae open it. I keep getting that "Windows doesn't recognise the program that created this file blah blah blah".

Any ideas on how to view it? Working from a Windows XP desktop though I've a Mac Powerbook also. Not tried it in that yet.

Thanks in advance.

try going through the browser's own file menu and opening it that way. Or try a different browser.

Worst comes to the worst, do a quick search for "swf decompiler" it should be able to extract the video itself. There's also a little standalone flash video player out there somewhere that may help

Had a look. No clue what I'm downloading or what benefit convcerting it to a FLA (?!!) is likely to have. Remember I know nish about technology. I'll just get him to mail it as a disc. Thanks anyway.

On another note, the same designer is having difficulty reading some foreign scripts (Japanese, Russian, Chinese and Thai) in the Word files I've sent him. All readable on my desktop AND my Powerbook but not on his Mac. He claims he cant find a solution on the net (which I would've thought would be simple?) and my partner, who could answer in an instant, is in a bothy in the Scottish Highland wilderness til Tuesday.

Any ideas?

needs to install the locales for those languages or he'll just get boxes.

Not sure if he can get them be reinstalling word, or whether he'll have to go to windows itself for them (I don't know if you can add locales after install, but I'd wager there's something in the control panels about it, keyboard or text settings or some such.) btw you might find a .fla will work in your browser. I had problems with flash9 in windows, then they just sort of fixed themselbes.

to read other scripts you need to do a download from microsquash and then run the system disc again.

i know i haven't bothered yet to reinstall Japanese since my crash.

Although I've got the plug-in like most, it often bombs IE out if you leave a tab open with it running for any length of time.

There are some stand alone players with free 'trial versions' available:

Quick Flash Player

Flash players and converters

Thanks lads.

i think this is a SWiSH file (which is a macromedia/ adobe compatible flash file)... maybe the file wasn't converted fully -or- with the acquisition of macromedia by adobe, there was an update that has vulnerablities and doesn't recognize the .swf extension... if you really want to see this file badly- download SWiSH @ swishzone.com... goodluck...