http://membres.lycos.fr/micban/

The Abobe people who have responded think that their context menu handling is acceptable. IT IS NOT ! WE NEED CONTROL OVER RIGHT CLICK !

Problems with Flash context menu:

1) With the Adobe context menu you can not use graphics or colors or perhaps match the color scheme of the webpage.

2) You cannot spawn a context menu programmatically. What if you want to display a context menu on any click of the mouse or perform some other function on right click ?

3) While there is an event prior to the context menu being displayed, there is no event when the context menu is dismissed say by the ‘escape’ key. What if your app needs to know this Abobe ?

4) There are many times when you want to display a menu on left click. This is the normal way. Well in flash chances are your custom menu will not match the Flash context menu which is unacceptable. If you could trap right click you are free to design your own menus and get the look and feel you need.

Adobe, stop thinking you know what people need, listen and use some imagination for pete’s sake.

Thank you for your feedback (over 1000 emails!) and the interesting discussion.

To answer JD’s question, by “this” I did not mean “Customizing flash menu” like some of the people here think, but instead to use the right-click event in action script for other uses (for ex. RTS games where left-click selects units and right-click dispatches orders).

The real question however is if the possibility of having a useful second mouse event in flash player instead of a mostly useless default menu would hurt anyone? Will it enable any kind of scam / will it be abused?

I think no. I think it will enable developers to deliver new generation of user interfaces and new ways to interact with content. In the world of multitouch interfaces we are still tied to a single click in Flash and I would like to be able to change that.

However during the initial testing on all available platforms we are stuck with Opera (which abuses JS standard by kidnapping mouse events), linux (due to X11) and several older browsers and mouse gesture plugins.

In short – JS hack will never be a perfect solution, although it works on 86% of tested cases. If a real right-click in Flash is to happen anytime soon – it has to come from within Adobe.

The Flash Player context menu has been customizable for years, and many people use this already (but not enough). You can turn off the “zoom” options and all the other defaults except the “About Flash Player” default. This one is mandatory because it is how the end user can reach their privacy settings. You can also create any new contextual menus that you like. This is well documented here: http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/2/langref/flash/ui/ContextMenu.html

Kevin’s post here can give you a lot more background and an example: http://blog.kevinhoyt.org/2007/01/11/flex-2-context-menus/

HTH,
David
Adobe

I don’t think it’s “How can I customize the context menu?”, because search term “flash player context menu” shows that this goal has been practical for quite a few years.

At first I tested the illustration of “this” on Safari/Mac, then tried again in Firefox/Mac and saw that it could superimpose the browser’s context-click while also intercepting the event for a drawing action.

What do you understand that this project enables…?

(Like Tim, I get annoyed with ads which use embedded clips or menu adjustments to remove the “Pause” options. As Joeri notes, the Player’s context menu will always the engine as Adobe Flash Player.)

jd/adobe

You can customize the flash context menu as much as you want, as long as you don’t remove adobe’s branding and options. So, unless your clients want you to replace adobe’s branding, I’m not quite sure what is meant here.