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

[Geoff Stearns]

well the history of this is that when I first created swfobject a  
couple of years ago, the default firefox install wasn't as nice as it  
is today..

so the idea was that if the use didn't have flash at all, you could  
put your own alternate content or 'upgrade message' in there and  
direct them to the adobe website - but it made more sense to me (and  
still does) to not automatically invoke the update feature in firefox  
or any browser (especially IE, where people might just think you are  
trying to install spyware these days).

So having said that, there are ways for you to invoke the install  
process in firefox if the user doens't have flash at all.

it would be really easy to use a little javascript in your page to  
sniff for firefox, and then display a little extra link that links  
them to the bypass detection page, or a custom upgrade page you may  
have created on your website. it's all up to you, go wild.




On Sep 25, 2006, at 6:34 PM, Chris Colman wrote:

> 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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