What is F-IN-BOX?
F-IN-BOX is a developer's library to enhance Adobe Flash Player ActiveX features. It does not use its own engine to display movies but provide a wrapper around official swflash.ocx/flash.ocx code instead. Thus it is possible to avoid certain Adobe Flash Player ActiveX limitations.
Both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Flash ActiveX are supported.
There are Delphi Edition (for Delphi, Builder C++, RAD Studio), .Net Edition (for C#, VB.Net and other .Net languages) and DLL Edition (for C++, VB6 and other languages that support dll).
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It is known fact that the Flash Player ActiveX is able to load movies at certain URLs only. You have to save the movie to a temporary location from your application's resource before you can load it. You'll have to generate a corresponding link that you can pass to the Flash Player ActiveX and then delete the movie after. You'll have to admit that this is extremely inconvenient. Apart from being inconvenient there is a chance you'll fail when you try to create a temporary file if you don't have the appropriate permission or don't have access to a temporary folder. It is definitely not an appropriate approach when security is an issue since your movie can be easily intercepted. There is a solution! F-IN-BOX uses a different approach of swflash.ocx / flash.ocx code loading. It is able to load your movies directly to the ActiveX thereby avoiding the temporary file step. The advantages are pretty obvious. And you can also protect your movies from unauthorized access using your favourite software protection application.
One of the biggest problem using the Flash Player ActiveX is the mandatory component registration. The common approach is to save swflash.ocx/flash.ocx code to temporary files and then register them. The disadvantages are the same as above mentioned - insufficient permissions to save and register an swflash.ocx/flash.ocx. Now you can forget about these problems! F-IN-BOX is able to use swflash.ocx/flash.ocx from any source. For example, you can put an swflash.ocx/flash.ocx code inside of your application's resources and instruct F-IN-BOX to use it. It is important to note that F-IN-BOX does not use temporary files and swflash.ocx/flash.ocx registration but loads and uses the code directly. No more user management rights problems - no more temporary files and no more component registrations. It is up to you to decide what swflash.ocx/flash.ocx to use - by default already registered component is used.
One of the problem with Adobe Flash Player ActiveX programming is that you have to control what version of Adobe Flash Player ActiveX you are using. For example, the property "Stacking" exists only in Adobe Flash Player ActiveX 5 but doesn't exist in later revisions. F-IN-BOX automatically detects what Adobe Flash Player ActiveX version is being used and prevents failure if access to non existant properties/methods is attempted. Applications using F-IN-BOX are not only compatible with any version of Adobe Flash Player ActiveX, but are also "smart" about how Adobe Flash Player ActiveX control is used. This makes your application more robust which can result in fewer technical support issues.
Using F-IN-BOX you are able to create applications based on transparent flash movies. You can create applications with translucency non-rectangle forms (windows). Use Flash to make applications with modern user interface, make a business logic using your favorite development tools.
F-IN-BOX supports so-called External API (available in Flash 8 and higher).
Using F-IN-BOX you are able to play Flash Video (FLV) from external files, URL or directly from a TStream. When F-IN-BOX loads Flash Video no temporary files are created everything runs directly from memory. You can encrypt your video and put into application's resource - F-IN-BOX loads FLV without ever saving or extracting the file to disk.
Using the component you can turn on/off all sounds in flash movies.
You can get bitmap images from the current flash movie. It means you are able create applications that can coverts Flash movies to a series of bitmaps, JPEGs and others. Also you can build generated images to make an AVI video for example.