[SWFObject] Detect missing Flash Player and Auto-Installlate st Flash Player

[Chris Colman]

We had this exact same problem because our animation product needed to
generate pages that auto downloaded the Flash player or at least
prompted the user to download Flash when it was not present. Many of our
AnFX users had complained that, after changing the embedding style to
"SWFObject" from "Standard <embed>/<object>", and regenerating the HTML
page that some visitors to their sites were not given the option of
installing the player if it was not already present (happened with many
new FireFox users).

So to fix it we changed AnFX so that when using the SWFObject embedding
style it automatically generates the code to prompt the user if no Flash
is discovered. I forget exactly what we did (it was a while back now and
it took a fair bit of tweaking) but it seems to work fine and we've had
no further problems with users who don't have the Flash player
installed. We didn't need to make any changes to SWFObject itself
(phew!) we just changed the generated javascript code that invoked it.

Please feel free to copy the javascript code that AnFX generates to
invoke SWFObject. You can download AnFX (www.anfx.com) and check out the
HTML code it generates by opening a sample movie and pressing the
"Preview in Browser" button and then viewing the source from within your
browser. Before previewing make sure you right click on the design and
choose Production Properties... and then change the embedding style to
"SWFObject" instead of "Standard" if it isn't already.

Regards,
-Chris

> > Hi all,
> >
> > I have been using SWFObject for months now.  But some of my clients
> > have always complained that my pages cannot detect missing Flash
> > Player and do a seemless install of the latest Flash Player.
> >
> > I have been searching the blogs and email lists and have looked at
> > ExpressInstall but that seems to address upgrading the Flash
> > Player.   My case is where there has never been a Flash Player on
> > the client machine.
> >
> > I apologize for my ignorance, can someone show me an example (if one
> > exists) that uses the SWFObject to Auto-Install the latest Flash
> > Player if one never existed.
> >
> > Again, my picky clients do not want to be redirected to Adobe
> > website and have to manually click around to install the player.
> > They want a seamless behind the scene solution that detects that
there
> > is no player installed, then auto-installs the player and then
brings
> > up the page normally as if the player was already installed.
> >
> >
> > Any help is much appreciated.
> > -Wyatt
> > _______________________________________________
> > SWFObject mailing list
> > SWFObject at lists.deconcept.com
> > http://lists.deconcept.com/listinfo.cgi/swfobject-deconcept.com
> 
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