[neekfenwick]

We're developing a serious application, one page of which has to show a spinning hourglass which is a Flash object in an html page. So, the flash object is defined by an <object> tag in an IE page.

We have some javascript that has to do some data preparation just before the page navigates off to another page. The problem is, the hourglass freezes up in a really ugly fashion while that javascript is executing. We need the Flash control to be able to continue rendering unaffected while this processing is going on.

<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="../images/animations/anim.swf" width="320" height="400">
<param name="movie" value="../images/animations/anim.swf" />
</object>
<script language="javascript">
// intense processing here...
</script>

Javascript's threading isn't intelligent enough to handle spawning a low priority background thread in which to do the processing, and the Flash control doesn't seem to have any parameters concerning its rendering priority. I can see the Flash control's interfaces via the Visual Studio COM/OLE Object Viewer, but nothing seems helpful.

How can I ensure the flash movie is played in a uniform manner, even if the browser containing it is busy processing javascript at the same time?

We have the following limitations:
1/ absolutely must use IE6 .. please don't tell me to use a different browser
2/ happy to use a different Flash control, but I hear the ocx redistributable is very hard to track down. Is there some latest version I should know about? Our current control has GUID D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000 and the flash.ocx it refers to has Version information 7.0.19.0.

Many thanks,
Nick