There is a practical way to detect the version of flash running on the client's computer. We will use System.capabilities class to reach our goal.

Description:

First of all flash gets a parameter called "url". This will be the url of a php file to call after version is detected. Keep in mind that if the php is not called then there is no flash player at all.

Flash code:

//GET -> url

var version:String = System.capabilities.version;
var load1:LoadVars = new LoadVars();
load1.load(url + "?version=" + version);

The LoadVars above calls our php and passes the version:

Php code:

$version = $_GET['version'];

... your actions here ...

?>

Html code to embed the swf:

  src="version.swf"
  width="0"
  height="0"
  flashvars="url=version.php"
/>

Conclusion:

From the code above you can see that we set the size to zero. We don't need anything else than it's detection job.

After compiling it the swf became 175 bytes.

Homework: think about solutions using flash without displaying a single frame. What functions and classes can you use in this case?

Sometimes you just have to send an e-mail with PHP. Contact forms, notifications, forgotten passwords, registration confirmations, whatever. PHP's mail() is an easy solution and with a little tweaking it is capable to do a lot.

The basic format for mail() is like this (well for our purposes... but you can check the complete reference):

mail ($to, $subject, $message, $headers);

Returns boolean true if sending the mail was successful.

Defining the recipient address(es):

Basicly, you just write a simple e-mail like 'vaze@retek.hu'. You can also use a name before the e-mail address with the format 'John Vaze <vaze@retek.hu>'. Sometimes you want several recipients, in this case you must separate them with commas.

Defining From:, CC:, BCC:, Reply-To headers:

Do these in $headers. You should separate header definitions with a "\r\n".

For example:

$headers='From: mocsk@retek.hu'."\r\n";
$headers.='Reply-To: mocsk@retek.hu'."\r\n";
$headers.='CC: mocsk@retek.hu, gihi@retek.hu'."\r\n";
$headers.='BCC: Baze Vaze <bv@retek.hu>'."\r\n";

Sending HTML e-mail:

To be able to send nice-looking e-mails, you need this. All you have to do is include these headers:

$headers.='MIME-version: 1.0'."\r\n";
$headers.='Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1'."\r\n";

Sending UTF-8 headers:

When dealing with customers from different nations, it is a must to use a character set which supports a wide range of characters. For example, Hungarian language uses ő and ű. The best answer is to use UTF-8.

$headers.='MIME-version: 1.0'."\r\n";
$headers.='Content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8'."\r\n";

If you don't need HTML, you can use text/plain. Remember that this applies only to $message, but not $subject and the names before the e-mail addresses. You have to convert these.

$subject='=?UTF-8?B?'.base64_encode($subject).'?=';

Remember that in $to, From:, etc. you should not convert the e-mail addresses, only the names! So don't convert the whole string, only the names.

(of course for UTF-8 to work normally the strings you use should be UTF-8, so either use UTF-8 in the database or utf8_encode(), or if you are using constant string in the code, the PHP file itself should be UTF-8)