FLASH PLAYER 10 : UPDATE YOUR DETECTION
DIGG IT!
6
Comments
Published
Saturday, October 11, 2008
at
9:08 AM
.
Every 18 months we run into the same problem when a new version of the Flash Player is released, detection scripts. I have been working with Flash Player 10 and there are many sites who are only detecting for Flash Player 9 and when you have 10 installed, you see nothing. This is a pretty old problem but there is a solution to it and it makes your life much easier.
Introducing SWFObject:
SWFObject handles placing a Flash Player into the browser DOM compatibly. It is a simple JavaScript library that embeds Flash SWF files on any page. The library both detects if Flash can be embedded and does so with fully compliant markup. Long story short it makes it easy too. Lets take a look.
SWFObject downloads
SWFObject Generator!
Also to get people started exploring SWFObject I have hosted the HTML generator for SWFObject, this simple HTML application allows you to generate everything you need for your specific SWF files. There are 2 ways to use SWFObject, Static(HTML) and Dynamic (JS) and the generator creates both allowing you to see the html needed in both cases.
There is also another important aspect to using SWFObject, SEO. SWFObject is the defacto way YouTube (Google) embeds Flash files on its site and one of their engineers, Geoff Stearns, created the project. It is the first embedding technique to work with google's crawler to allow your SWF files to be indexed correctly.
What I really like about SWFObject is that if you use it you are ready for Flash Player 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, and onward. The detection script is forward compatible in its detection so once implemented on your site, it will always work. The API also makes it easy to designate the minimium version that you require based on your content. If you are using Pixel Bender or any of the new Flash Player 10 features, simply designate version 10 and version 10 or higher will be detected.
I also want to give credit to the creators of SWFObject, special thanks to Geoff Stearns, Bobby Vandersluis, and Mike Williams. They have done an amazing job maintaining the software and it is easily the most complete detection system for Flash Player ever created and is now the default in all of Adobe Creative Suite CS4.
Mike your legacy lives on! :)
Cheers,
Ted :)
SWFObject should be the obvious choice for any flash deployment, and has been for me "always." :)
But let me just seize on your final comment; is SWFObject really the default detection/replacement method in the Flash CS4 publish procedure? Is this also true for other CS4 apps that export to flash, and maybe even upcoming Flex Builder 4?
Just want to clarify so that I didn't get it wrong. :)
Cheers for the write up Ted. Although you have just made our lives a bit busier on the SWFObject lists now :)
Also, as far as I know, there is only 1 Google employee managing the project, unless Geoff has been cloning himself (or Bobby has changed jobs)...
Cheers,
Aran Rhee
(One of the SWFObject list managers)
I guess I would like to know why this hasn't been integrated with flex builder. It looks like in order to use it I would have rewrite all my deep linking code and JS that flex builder dumps in by default. Is this not the case?
@Zachary
I'm sure it will be looked at for the next Flex release (which is on a different release cycle than CS4). That being said, there is a simple fix for the FABridge.js file to get the two working happily together today.
read more on this SWFObject wiki page
@aran
Great thanks a lot. Now I can use xsl/xhtml with flex deep linking!!!!!
There's an article about SWFObject 2 by Bobby van der Sluis on the Adobe Developer Connection that you might find helpful:
Detecting Flash Player versions and embedding SWF files with SWFObject 2