Discuss: Flash Satay: Embedding Flash While Supporting Standards

by Drew McLellan

241 w3c problems

I’ve had problems with validating the flash through w3c; it wont recognize my opening <object> and <embed> because when I close them, it says ‘cannot find opening tag…’ pretty much, that sucks..

posted at 03:11 am on December 25, 2003 by bs0d

242 2 RazorX and Dan T

Take a look at http://vmalek.murphy.cz/ or http://www.quirksmode.org/css/100percheight.html

posted at 10:52 pm on December 25, 2003 by JohnyB

243 still testing

just a side note before i even begin my tests, if you want a passed variable to be available on larger files, look into:

FlashVars

http://www.macromedia.com/support/flash/
ts/documents/flashvars.htm

which will have variables available immediately vs the method such as myflash.swf?varname=foo which may or may not be available depending on the size of the swf.

posted at 09:38 pm on December 26, 2003 by amacdonald

I have only made the concious decision lately to start writing standards compliant code and this problem foxed me for most of today! Once I implemented your article I found it worked to great effect. The end result is here: http://www.simplycfhost.com/om

The only problem I have is in IE6 with a thin bar appearing above the side menu, but that could be me.

I actually used a cfinclude tag to pull all the images and tables in to replace the Flash movie and it still works fine.

My hat off to you, now I just gotta lose this bar!!! :)

posted at 03:55 pm on January 2, 2004 by Phil Williams

245 netscape...

I do not arrive has to make function this method under Netscape PC would have a solution?
[sorry for my english, and maybe i do something wrong, see my problem on http://www.e-mergency.net ]
ps:nice article

posted at 08:38 am on January 3, 2004 by adrien

246 Works with Mozilla?

I have been trying to do this for a while now and came across this site which said it would work with Mozilla. However, I haven’t been able to get it working, can anybody tell me why?

Unless it doesn’t like relative paths, I can’t see what the problem is.

CODE:
<object type=“application/x-shockwave-flash” data=”../_images/generic/map.swf” width=“218” height=“218”><param name=“movie” value=”../_images/generic/map.swf” valuetype=“object” ></object>

posted at 04:16 am on January 6, 2004 by Luke Hammond

247 Re: Works in Mozilla?

Re: Luke Hammond
I can’t see anything in you code that would keep it from working in Mozilla. I tested the map.swf directly off of your site using the following browsers in Win2K:

Mozilla 1.3.1 using FlashPlyr 6.23
Mozilla 1.4 using FlashPlyr 6.29
Mozilla 1.5 using FlashPlyr 6.79

They all worked just fine. I even tested a relative path off of my own server using your exact XHTML code and that also worked fine in Mozilla.

I did notice that your map.swf does not work with any Flash players less than 6.23.

I tested with Flash players 5.30 or 5.41 and the .swf did not display. So point being, that maybe the Mozilla you are using is grabbing an older Flash player from it’s automatic search plugin feature?

Things to re-check:

1. Make sure the automatic plugin search is off.
2. Reinstall the Flash player to ensure that it is not corrupted.
3. Re-export and re-upload map.swf to ensure it’s not corrupted.

So, the first thing I can suggest is to turn off Mozilla’s automatic plugin search feature and make sure that a fresh Flash Player of
6.23 or higher is loaded in your Mozilla.

The process for turning off the plugin search is to go to your Mozilla directory and then find:

defaults\pref\winpref.js

In the winpref.js the line your are looking for is located toward the bottom around line 453 or so. It will look like this:

//pref(“plugin.scan.4xPluginFolder”, false);

Just take the two comments out to force it NOT to search for Flash plugin in another browser or directory, like this:

pref(“plugin.scan.4xPluginFolder”, false);

Now install a fresh copy of NPSWF32.dll to Mozilla’s plugins folder from another Netscape of at least a 6.23, or one from Macomedia’s Flash player archive page:
http://www.macromedia.com/support/flash/ts/documents/oldplayers.htm

You could also save your Flash .swf down to version 5 and see if it works then. However, it’s good to know how to turn off the plugin
search feature when testing with various Flash player versions.

I may be off on a tangent, but auto search could be fishing out a lesser Flash player..?

Please visit my Contact section under RazorX.com and e-mail me a problem test page link if this turns out to not be the fix, and
I can try more testing.

posted at 11:01 am on January 6, 2004 by Daniel

248 Re: Netscape/Firebird height="100%" issue fixed wi

Re: Ric Gates wrote: Uhm, that’s not a bug.

Well, Mr. Gates, I tried your CSS fix and it thankfully corrects the percent problem in Netscape 7 and Firebird, however, there are a few issues with the suggested CSS. Even though CSS fixes it, it still seems quirky to me. First, to recap for those who have been following these comments, I would like to re-summarize the Satay goals that are trying to be accomplished:

1. To use Flash Satay, which is itself just XHTML compliant code.
2. To get an embedded Flash object to work at 100% and overcome the height=“100%” attribute non-display issue.

Using XHTML normally with the object tag attributes of: height and width in pixels works just fine. The problem arises when you try to use 100% in the object tag’s height attribute. So now, the latest fix seems to be that we are required to use CSS intervention to just make the object attribute of height=“100%” work. So now you might be asking, if the height percent is a valid attribute option, then why doesn’t it work by itself? That’s a good question. Perhaps the width and height attributes are still there just for the older browsers…? But I have tested the CSS in over 20 browsers and it does work. However, the CSS suggestion proposed previously does have it’s issues.

I am re-posting the previous CSS suggestion here and calling it CSS percent fix suggestion 1:

body {margin: 0px; padding: 0px}
object {position: absolute; top: 0px; bottom: 0px}

First off, bottom: 0; is not needed any of the 23 browsers I tested. Second, the position:absolute declaration in the object selector, kills the object display specifically in Netscape 6.0, 6.01 and 6.1. But if the position: absolute is taken out, then the Flash object will NOT display in most newer browsers. Also object {position: absolute;} keeps NS 4.8 or less from resizing/stretching the object. So the best way to resolve these issues is to take OUT the object selector, and instead use height: 100%; in an html,body declaration.

This is CSS percent fix suggestion 2:

html, body { margin: 0; padding: 0; height: 100%; }

Notice the padding: 0; is required for Opera browsers to display the object fully. The additional html element selector is also needed to deal with the way some browsers see the viewport. You can even throw in a width: 100%; and take out the width and height attributes in the object element, but if you do, be sure to test how it works in your target browsers, as the full CSS may not be liked by all. The CSS suggestion 2 works in every browser higher than Netscape 4.8 on a Win2K box and the list of happy browsers I tested with are:

I.E.: 5.5, 6
Firebird: 0.6. 0.6.1, 0.7
K-Meleon: 0.7, 0.8.1
Mozilla: 1.3.1, 1.4, 1.5
Netscape: 6.0, 6.01, 6.1, 6.2, 7.0, 7.02, 7.1
Opera: 6.02, 6.06, 7.01, 7.03, 7.11, 7.23

The only issue that arises is in Netscape 4.8 or less browsers. They will over-scale the Flash object because of the height: 100%; declaration. So you can just say to hell with those older browsers, or you can detect for them and pull the height: 100%; out for them. View home page source code at Razorx.com if you are interested in the JavaScript to detect and write for those older NS browsers located in the style portion. Sincere thanks goes to Ric Gates for the CSS suggestion, and thanks to JohnyB for the helpful article posts. For the moment, in this new landscape of XHTML, the suggestion of using CSS is currently the best way to fix the 100% percent issue in the object height attribute when a full Flash web site is desired.

posted at 11:08 am on January 8, 2004 by RazorX

249 width, height and id

Not sure how relevant or useful this is but while I was testing your method I added this to my css,

#flash { width: 400; height: 300; }

Then added,

It elimated the need for the width and height tags in the browsers I tested. Any thoughts on this?

I was also wondering if it was possible to turn the alternate image into a link back to Macromedia update.

posted at 04:43 pm on January 10, 2004 by twist

250 Satay + Version Detection

Does anyone know of a way to detect the Flash Player version while remaining XHTML compliant – all in one page? I know Macromedia has a 2004 deployment kit, but this requires multiple pages and multiple Flash files. Ideally, I’d like to detect the player version in a included ECMAScript function and determine to either show the movie or show a replacement image.

posted at 11:09 am on January 12, 2004 by Rich Hauck