Bypass Print Dialog

[Ken Silanskas]

Hi all,
I'm building a ticketing system for a minor league baseball team and of
course it will utilize a ticket printer. I was wondering if there is a way
through AS 2.0 in combo with any other technology that would allow me to
bypass the print dialog when the user presses a button and just print? I
didn't want them to have to hit "OK" - It is a company intranet app so the
servers and workstations are at my disposal for modifications. Computers are
running XP. Suggestions?

-Ken from Cali

[findapollo]

There is an ActiveX Control you could use but it's kinda a round-about way to
go about it.
This is because, the ActiveX control is usually used to print a web page.
Since you're printing from Flash, you would have to go about getting the
webpage loaded with the ticket (formatted for printing) and then call the print
function when loaded. I would try doing this with an <iframe> and then getURL
to post information to that <iframe>. You could then use ASP or PHP to format
the ticket and include the necessary VBScript to print 'onload'. If this
sounds interesting, let me know, I'll post the code and an explanation.

[Ken Silanskas]

I am definitely interested. I have one thing to add. I could be printing
multiple tickets from the application in succession. Say if a group of 10
buys a ticket. 10 tickets need to be printed with the separate information.
Let me know. Thanks!!

"findapollo" <webforumsuser@macromedia.com> wrote in message
news:c15ut0$3ed$1@forums.macromedia.com...

> There is an ActiveX Control you could use but it's kinda a round-about way

to

> go about it.
> This is because, the ActiveX control is usually used to print a web page.
> Since you're printing from Flash, you would have to go about getting the
> webpage loaded with the ticket (formatted for printing) and then call the

print

> function when loaded. I would try doing this with an <iframe> and then

getURL

> to post information to that <iframe>. You could then use ASP or PHP to

format

> the ticket and include the necessary VBScript to print 'onload'. If this
> sounds interesting, let me know, I'll post the code and an explanation.
>

[findapollo]

Let me ask you a few questions to see if this will actually work.

How do you print tickets now? Is there a special format that the information
has to be sent to the printer and do you think that can be sent from
a web page? If there is a command line utility that prints them that'd
be even better (seeing as you have control of the network).

If there is a specific format that the printer understands and it's simple
enough,
you could probably do it all with a VBScript that you call from Flash. But if
there
is a command line utility, you should be able to just call it directly from
flash
with with fscommand()

Let me know,

Nick