WordPress 2.6.3 Wrapper Flash Theme

Since upgrading to WordPress 2.6.3 I’ve lost most of the functionality that the 2.2.2 Flash integration from the Sajid Saiyed modification had. Fortunately, I came across the Flash HTML Wrapper that works well for the folks at Motion and Color. HTML Wrapper_Wordpress hides the rendered HTML page via swfobject and replaces it with an SWF that parses the CSS and then renders the page. There’s not a lot of documentation for the subversion, so here are the steps for a successful integration:

1. First of course you’ll need Wordpress installed, I’ve got 2.6.3 running with out any major modifications.
2. Second, download the motion and color wrapper_wordpress theme. Change the name to just “wrapper” and install it in the theme directory of your wordpress installation.
3. Then you’ll want to customize your permalink structure by making sure it is in the default setting with all pages and posts residing in the root wp directory.

WOW! after much customization, I am highly impressed. There are many things I lament, but in time I can correct them. Some of the problems include:

1. 1. Your posts in wordpress cannot contain any errors. The rendering is quite strict, so if you forgot to close an ordered list tag the whole post will be for not and you’ll pull up an empty page. All comments are prone to this problem, so a seemingly harmless malformed accolade can render an entire post invisible.
2. 2. Not all characters are included in the fonts. For example the ‘apostrophe’ and the right and left carrot symbols are missing from the included exported font Rockwell. This can be fixed by upgrading the font or even creating a new one.
3. 3. There isn’t much regard for margin or padding the way the swf parses the css, so you’ll have to add span tags to ensure spacing occurs as desired
4. 4. While all tags must be closed in the wordpress posts they are all-so CASE SENSITIVE. This might come in handy when posting example scripts to render as plain text.
5. 5. There are many formatting errors, did I mention img alignment, the ordered lists are not ordered. There is much to do to fix the css