Flash Dancer v.2.0 (updated June 17, 2009)
Flash Dancer gives Adobe Flash multi-monitor support. Want to play your Flash file fullscreen on monitor 2? Now you can. Want it to span fullscreen over 4 monitors? No problem with Flash Dancer. This is extremely useful in kiosk type applications, large scale multimedia installations, restaurants displaying menus on remote monitors, etc. Its been confirmed to work on a 6 monitor setup without a burp.
Vista users may have to install the Flash plugin from Internet Explorer to be sure flash.ocx installs system wide, but otherwise Vista should work just fine.
Usage is very straight forward, just download and point Flash Dancer at your SWF. For example, in this screen capture, Flash Dancer is about to launch "cig.swf" fullscreen spanning monitors 1 and 2:
Creating Shortcuts
Optionally, you can create a shortcut to your SWF. Once you set the options, you can easily repeat your settings by double-clicking that shortcut:
Commandline Usage
You can also run Flash Dancer from commandline if you'd like:
c:\flashdancer\flashdancer.exe -fname="f:\my docs\logo.swf" -monitor=2
To span multiple monitors, something like:
c:\flashdancer\flashdancer.exe -fname="f:\my docs\logo.swf" -monitor=1,2
Note the quotes around the filename, which are only necessary if your path has spaces in it.
There's also the commandline switch "-hidden", which will keep the flash window from appearing in the Windows taskbar. This is handy if the computer is being used for other purposes and you don't want someone accidentally closing or minimizing the Flash window. Note that this only works when launching a SWF on a single monitor, not with monitor spanning. So for example:
c:\flashdancer\flashdancer.exe -fname="f:\my docs\logo.swf" -monitor=2 -hidden=yes
You can close any window launched by Flash Dancer by clicking the Flash window and then pressing the ESC key.
Other Features
Let me know if you need any other features. Some things that would be easy enough to add:
- ability to launch other types of media such as JPGs or PNGs, including PNGs with transparencies
- ability to launch non-fullscreen windows, placed at precise X & Y coordinates
- ability to name the windows so they can be closed from other apps or commandline
Updates
version 2.0 (7/18/09): can now launch SWFs spanning multiple monitors!
version 1.5 (5/19/09): added files "flashdancer_hide.exe" and "flashdancer_show.exe", which show and hide the main flashdancer window. Useful if you're running on a public computer and don't want people to accidentally close the program. You can find both these files in the program directory, which by default is c:\flashdancer. Also added the -hidden commandline argument, which lets you launch the flash window hidden from the Windows taskbar. And a couple of improvements when running from commandline: it now exits cleanly, and it no longer displays any debugging info to the console.
version 1.3 (2/25/08): escape key now only exits if the Flash window has focus.
Download
Flash Dancer Installer. Note that in demo mode, the Flash window closes after a period.
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