Browser Compatibility
A major benefit of Flash is that the Flash Player plug-in is proprietary; you won't find dozens of different plug-ins from different companies with different bugs and feature-sets. As a result, a Flash applet will look and behave the same way on any system and in any browser. The plug-in is available for a number of systems, including all flavours of Windows, MacOS and MacOS X, and Linux/Unix. (Macromedia's website contains a list of systems and download links at www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/alternates.)

However, the plug-in has to communicate with the host browser for certain things (the most obvious being to open links clicked in an applet) and some browsers don't support all the possible communication methods. Here are some of the features included in Cool Focus applets that may not work in all browsers:

Loading Images
Flash applets in the following system/browser combinations cannot load images:
  • Netscape 3 and 4 on Windows 3.1
  • Netscape 3 and 4 on Mac 68k
  • Internet Explorer 3 on Mac
  • Internet Explorer 3 on Windows 3.1


URLs using JavaScript: pseudo-protocol
Flash applets in the following system/browser combinations cannot work with links that use the JavaScript: pseudo-protocol (such as javascript:history.back()):
  • Netscape 3 and 4 on Windows 3.1
  • Netscape 3 and 4 on Mac 68k
  • Internet Explorer 3 on Windows 3.1, 95, NT
  • Internet Explorer 4 on Mac


JavaScript function access
Access to JavaScript functions is needed for a several optional Cool Focus features, such as displaying messages in the browser's status bar and working with our Satellite add-on and PageSync feature. The following system/browser combinations do not support this:
  • Netscape 3 and 4 on Windows 3.1
  • Netscape 3 and 4 on Mac 68k
  • Netscape 6 on Windows and Mac
  • Internet Explorer 3 on Mac and Windows 3.1
  • Internet Explorer 4 on Mac
  • Internet Explorer 5 on Mac


Transparency
Some Cool Focus applets provide a Transparent parameter, allowing the applet's background to be transparent and the background of the web page to be visible behind it. This feature is only supported by Internet Explorer 4 and higher on Windows systems.