I have spent the last 12 hours trying to figure this out. I have an html page that works great, when I move my code from that page onto a ascx page using <% skin path %>flash.swf the flash shows up on the page but the XML file cannot be located. All files are in the same directory and like i said it works great on the html page. Any suggestion to how to debug or fix this error?

You have to specify the location of the xml .... portals/portal#/file.xml. Just putting it in the same directory doesn't always work.

Steve are you referring to the path in the FLA file? If so does it require the ../portals/o/filename.xml as the path?

Sorry if this seems simple, I don't use flash enough to remember the last time I used it.

That's pretty much it. Any code that you have that points to a file has to include the portals/portal#/filename.ext to be found correctly in my experience. There may be a way around that, but so far I haven't found one.

I have been able to get it to work when I add the full URL http://website.com/Portals/0/Skins/...yflash.xml to the path in the Actionscript in the fla file but not using Portals/0/Skins/SkinName/myflash.xml or ../Portals/0/Skins/SkinName/myflash.xml doesn't make sense to me why it doesn't.

Also are you referring to a swf embedded in your template ? I just did this yesterday embedding a flash header that rotates images according to an XML file.
The previous post is correct about using the relative path to the XML file, I just go all the way and use the full URL...
also if you don't want to specify the XML file in the flash file itself what I did(and usually do) is attach the XML location as a variable at the end of the URL
so in the action script(AS2) it'd look something like this:

//Check if the GET parameter XMLfile is set, if not use a default file
if(_root.XMLfile==undefined || _root.XMLfile==""){
    _root.XMLfile="whatever.xml";

and your embed tag in the ASCX would look something like this:

<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=8,0,0,0" width="800" height="250" id="main_banner" align="middle">
    <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" />
    <param name="allowFullScreen" value="false" />
    <param name="movie" value="http://mysite.com/main_banner.swf?XMLfile=http://mysite.com/main_banner.xml" /><param name="quality" value="high" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff" />    <embed src="http://mysite.com/main_banner.swf?XMLfile=http://mysite.com/main_banner.xml" quality="high" bgcolor="#ffffff" width="800" height="250" name="main_banner" align="middle" allowScriptAccess="sameDomain" allowFullScreen="false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer" />embed>
    object>

Yes, I am trying to embed a flash carousel into my skin, with the XML describing the items in the carousel.

I've never been able to reference an XML (or any external file) from within a Flash movie from inside a DNN ASCX source page.
It's hard enough using a relative path to the movie from within the embed tags.
SO I just do as you have done, and put the full URL.
If you look at my above code I'm just appending the XML's location to the GET variable at the end of the SWF's URL which is handy if you want to
distribute the SWF or don't want to recompile if the XML file changes location, meaning you just change your embed tag.


EDIT:What's up with the formatting on this forum?
Or the lack thereof