Problems with Valid Flash (I know about Satay)

[mediaman_12]

Ok So I know about the non-valid rubish that Flash & DW use to put Flash on an HTML page. and this is the mathod I have been using to do ut manually.

<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="Flash/mov.swf" class="discountflash">
    	  <param name="quality" value="high">
    	  <param name="wmode" value="transparent">
    	  <param name="movie" value="Flash/mov.swf">
    	  <!-- ugly but Spider frendly 'hidden' copy replaces this comment tag Use simple html formating to increase search rankings-->
		  <img src="Images/nonflashimages/fill image.jpg" width="725" height="113" alt="get flash">
        </object>

This was working nicely until I realised that prelloaders don't work in IE (I don't use IE a lot, I also Have broardband so didn't notice)
So I did a seach and came across Drews Flash Satay article, But I can't seam to get the container movie to load the main flash swf file?
I created a container mov with just the

root.loadMovie(_root.path,0);

AS on the first (and only) frame. and put "Flash/cont.swf?path=Flash/mov.swf" in the paths of the above method, but it doesn't work? the flash container loads in, I put a square on it so I could see if it was loading, but it doesn't load the main swf.
Any ideas, some browser setting can't overide this, or the latest Flash plugin stopping it from working?

[spudz]

Try this:

All of the code here is by Geoff Stearns of deconcept.com. Check out the entire explanation here

var FlashObject = function(swf, id, w, h, ver, c) {
	this.swf = swf;
	this.id = id;
	this.width = w;
	this.height = h;
	this.version = ver;
	this.align = "middle";

	this.params = new Object();
	this.variables = new Object();

	this.redirect = "";
	this.sq = document.location.search.split("?")[1] || "";
	this.bypassTxt = "<p>Already have Macromedia Flash Player? <a href='?detectflash=false&"+ this.sq +"'>Click here if you have Flash Player "+ this.version +" installed</a>.</p>";
	
	if (c) this.color = this.addParam('bgcolor', c);
	this.addParam('quality', 'high'); // default to high
	this.doDetect = getQueryParamValue('detectflash');
}

var FOP = FlashObject.prototype;

FOP.addParam = function(name, value) { this.params[name] = value; }

FOP.getParams = function() { return this.params; }

FOP.getParam = function(name) { return this.params[name]; }

FOP.addVariable = function(name, value) { this.variables[name] = value; }

FOP.getVariable = function(name) { return this.variables[name]; }

FOP.getVariables = function() { return this.variables; }

FOP.getParamTags = function() {
    var paramTags = "";
    for (var param in this.getParams()) {
        paramTags += '<param name="' + param + '" value="' + this.getParam(param) + '" />';
    }
    return (paramTags == "") ? false:paramTags;
}

FOP.getHTML = function() {
    var flashHTML = "";
    if (navigator.plugins && navigator.mimeTypes.length) { // netscape plugin architecture
        flashHTML += '<embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="' + this.swf + '" width="' + this.width + '" height="' + this.height + '" id="' + this.id + '" align="' + this.align + '"';
        for (var param in this.getParams()) {
            flashHTML += ' ' + param + '="' + this.getParam(param) + '"';
        }
        if (this.getVariablePairs()) {
            flashHTML += ' flashVars="' + this.getVariablePairs() + '"';
        }
        flashHTML += '></embed>';
    } else { // PC IE
        flashHTML += '<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" width="' + this.width + '" height="' + this.height + '" id="' + this.id + '" align="' + this.align + '">';
        flashHTML += '<param name="movie" value="' + this.swf + '" />';
        if (this.getParamTags()) {
            flashHTML += this.getParamTags();
        }
        if (this.getVariablePairs() != null) {
            flashHTML += '<param name="flashVars" value="' + this.getVariablePairs() + '" />';
        }
        flashHTML += '</object>';
    }
    return flashHTML;	
}

FOP.getVariablePairs = function() {
    var variablePairs = new Array();
    for (var name in this.getVariables()) { 
    	variablePairs.push(name + "=" + escape(this.getVariable(name))); 
    }
    return (variablePairs.length > 0) ? variablePairs.join("&"):false;
}

FOP.write = function(elementId) {
	if(detectFlash(this.version) || this.doDetect=='false') {
		if (elementId) {
			document.getElementById(elementId).innerHTML = this.getHTML();
		} else {
			document.write(this.getHTML());
		}
	} else {
		if (this.redirect != "") {
			document.location.replace(this.redirect);
		} else if (this.altTxt) {
			if (elementId) {
				document.getElementById(elementId).innerHTML = this.altTxt +""+ this.bypassTxt;
			} else {
				document.write(this.altTxt +""+ this.bypassTxt);
			}
		}
	}		
}

/* ---- detection functions ---- */
function getFlashVersion() {
	var flashversion = 0;
	if (navigator.plugins && navigator.mimeTypes.length) {
		var x = navigator.plugins["Shockwave Flash"];
		if(x && x.description) {
			var y = x.description;
   			flashversion = y.charAt(y.indexOf('.')-1);
		}
	} else {
		result = false;
	    for(var i = 15; i >= 3 && result != true; i--){
   			execScript('on error resume next: result = IsObject(CreateObject("ShockwaveFlash.ShockwaveFlash.'+i+'"))','VBScript');
   			flashversion = i;
   		}
	}
	return flashversion;
}

function detectFlash(ver) {	return (getFlashVersion() >= ver) ? true:false; }

// get value of query string param
function getQueryParamValue(param) {
	var q = document.location.search || document.location.href.split("#")[1];
	if (q) {
		var detectIndex = q.indexOf(param +"=");
		var endIndex = (q.indexOf("&", detectIndex) > -1) ? q.indexOf("&", detectIndex) : q.length;
		if (q.length > 1 && detectIndex > -1) {
			return q.substring(q.indexOf("=", detectIndex)+1, endIndex);
		} else {
			return "";
		}
	}
}

/* add Array.push if needed */
if(Array.prototype.push == null){
	Array.prototype.push = function(item) { this[this.length] = item; return this.length; }
}

Save it as

<script type="text/javascript" src="flashobject.js"></script>

Then use this to display the Flash

<div id="flashcontent">
  Place your alternate content here and users without the Flash plugin
  or with Javascript turned off will see this.
  Include a link to <a href="?detectflash=false">bypass the detection</a>
  if you wish.
</div>
<script type="text/javascript">
 // <![CDATA[
  var fo = new FlashObject("fo_tester.swf", "fo_tester", "300", "150", 6, "#336699");
  fo.write("flashcontent");
 // ]]>
</script>

[mediaman_12]

Wow that's more content heavy and complex than the over long crap that the Flash Application spits out.

So there's a choice of having the Page validate, but not preload. Not validate, but but preload properly. Or have valid HTML, with a preloader that works, but you have to bloat up the page with a huge javascript in the process.

This method also doesn't allow really useful stuff you can put in the <param /> tags like FLASHVARS (for passing verables to the linked flash file) and BASE for setting up the root value for the Flash file.

[zcorpan]

If you don't care about validation then I believe this works cross browser:

<embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="Flash/mov.swf" width="300" height="150">

It doesn't provide as good fallback as object does, though.

[brownchild]

So there's a choice of having the Page validate, but not preload. Not validate, but but preload properly. Or have valid HTML, with a preloader that works, but you have to bloat up the page with a huge javascript in the process.

im about to jump onto the FlashObject method of detecting flash..... so about the FlashObject java routine .. is it really THAT heavy? im not a JAva Script guy at all so i have no idea how the java engine crunches those lines of code..

what i know is im about to use the FlashObject script on each of my webpage in my main MASTHEAD/HEADER which is Flash+Main Navigation.. please advise.