Posted by: Manuel Razzari

2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00

You migh like to know that I'm using IE5.5 on Win98. You also might like to know that all I see instead of the flash movie is a

-like empty field.

The technique works fine on Mozilla. Though if it can't work fine on IE5.0 it's of no use to me. Any ideas? Which attribute is missing that is causing the error?

, though theoretically great, is not quite supported. See
http://www.student.oulu.fi/~sairwas/object-test/results/
This test chart shows that OBJECT should be working on my browser. It isn't.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: Millennium</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
Jonathan said that all Mac browsers used only the Embed tag to access plugins. From what I can tell, that's not true. Mozilla and Chimera seem to work just fine with this technique; I will assume Netscape does as well. IE5/Mac works with it, as do iCab and Opera.

NS4 and OmniWeb 4.x don't seem to work with the Object tag. Frankly, it's their loss.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: Drew McLellan</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
I've re-tested and with a version of the player compatible with the movie in this article, and I see it working in both IE 5.0 and NS 4.
I'd be interested to hear if you have the same problem in these browsers once you've updated your Flash Player.
(remember there a techniques outside the scope of this article for detecting what version of the player is being used).
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: Jonathan</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
What I meant is that the method used by almost everybody (the "Cooked Twice Method" aka the Macromedia Code) made the  tag useless in Mac browsers - all of them relied on the  to display the plugin. Believe me, I had a lot of problem with a client updating pages I've done in FrontPage (brrrr...). It made the Flash on the page disappear in every Mac browser, because it was always removing the  tag (IE/Windows doesn't need them).

Obviously, the article proved that it is possible to use the  tag with Mac browsers, something I thought was not possible before.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: Keith Bell</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
I find the same result as Manuel Razzari with IE5.5/Win - see a screenshot at [img]http://www.december14.net/graphics/posts/flashsatay.gif[/img]

Interestingly, though the box looks like a TEXTAREA, I found you can't actually type in it. Also, note that the page title appears as "about:blank" rather than "A List Apart: Flash Satay" as given by the TITLE tags. Maybe these give a clue to some bright spark as to what's going on.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: Drew McLellan</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
I have the Flash working in IE 5.5 here, so it's not a direct 5.5 issue.
Do you get the same results once you've updated your Flash Player? I have to stress that the article includes no player version checking - this alone is the subject of another article. 
Thanks for the feedback.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: dave rau</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
You have saved me! Having written strict compliant XHTML/CSS for the last 1.5 years I can now have 100% compliant Flash movies in my content. Excellent. Leave it to Alistapart!
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: Michael Zajac</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
I did a quick test of a QuickTime Movie object, with pretty good results on a Mac OS X, using the following code:

Error text
</object>

Worked fine on Chimera 0.6, Mozilla 1.1, Opera 6b2 and iCab 2.8.2. 
MSIE 5.1.1 worked but showed no movie controller. 
OmniWeb 4.1.1 displayed the nested content.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: Michael Zajac</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
For compatibility, why not nest two  tags?

The outer one uses the traditional method for MSIE/win, and the inner one for Netscape and Mac browsers.

This is not quite as trim on the code, but should still validate, work almost everywhere and allows nested fallback html.

[rats, I shouldn't have typet "<" on my previous post. Can someone fix that?]
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: Peter K. Sheerin</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
Michael--nice thought, but IE/Win will render *all* nested object tags, not just the first one.

I know this because I've been working on a slightly different method of embedding cross-browser compatible plug-ins using , and making use of some new features being added to Mozilla.

In the process, I came up with a way to nest object tags without getting the double, tripple, etc. rendering in IE/Win, while still supporting automatic downloading of plugins--for both IE and Mozilla. I'm not quite done testing across browsers and platforms, otherwise I'd share the details.

There's probably a whole other article there, if apartness is interested.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: Bill Mason</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
IE/Win has a bug where if you nest two OBJECTs, it will try to play them both. So that works in theory, but not in practice.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: Michael Zajac</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
Aw, too bad MSIE/win breaks on nested Objects.

If anyone's interested, I just found that OmniWeb 4.1.1 recognizes a windows-style QuickTime object, with the classid and codebase. So the following code works on a bunch of modern Mac browsers, and I'm guessing on Mozilla/win too:

Error text.
 </object>
</object>

Now if we figure out how to hide the second object from MSIE/win . . .
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: Colin Sparrow</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
I notice you said the page doesn't include version testing. Which version of Flash is required to view the movie? I just tried looking at the page using IE6/Windows XP/Flash 5.0, and the movie wasn't displayed. It wasn't until I reached the end of the article and read the byline that I even knew there was supposed to be an animation.

C
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: Jonathan Porter</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
I think it is important to point out exactly what is being embedded. The IE method embeds an actual ActiveX control which by design has specific properties (parameters; s) and functions but only can realistically work on Windows systems. The other method embeds the “file�? which could be use on all systems and it’s up to the browser to choose the appropriate “plug-in�?.

The problem with this is most formats do NOT have actual properties and functions associate with them. This means you not could tell an MPEG movie for instance to “play�? through script and you can’t specify whether it should be displayed with a movie controller and expect it to work without exception on all systems.

Ironically this isn’t a problem for XML and many XML based formats (XHTML, SVG) as they can typically relay on the DOM and extended DOMs. The WebCGM format also specifies specific properties for it’s format when used in an HTML/XHTML object tag scenario.

I think it’s something that needs to be addressed either with standard functions and properties for media types or perhaps SMIL.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by:</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
Hi Drew, I scanned the article and the comments, but am not sure of one point... which browser brands, in which versions and on which platforms did you test this? And were their initial configurations including (a) no Player; (b) old Player; and (c) current Player?

tx,
jd
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: chas</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
here is a safer solution:

ask the macromedia team to alter their swf template in future versions of flash.

they screwed up on this one - but using a fix (odd word in this context i know) will just make things more complicated in the future. for the moment, there's safety in numbers.

having said that...

it is a pretty elegant hack! well done :-)
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: Jonathan</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
OK - here is the code that I would need:

</object>

As pointed earlier, it works fine in Mozilla 1.1a, Chimera 0.6, Opera 6b2, OmniWeb 4.1 (all on MacOS X, don't have access to Windows yet).

On IE 5.1/Mac: some  seem to be ignored, notably "controller" and "href". If I clic on the poster movie, the linked movie doesn't load. And a controller is always visible. In fact, I'd be tempted to say that all  tags are ignored and default settings applied. Anyone can confirm this?
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: Drew McLellan</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
In response to jd, this technique has been tested and known to work in:

Win IE 5, IE 5.5, IE 6
Win NS 4, NS 6, NS 7
Win MZ 1, MZ 1.1
Mac IE 5 (OS 9 & X)
Mac NS 4, NS 6, NS 7
Mac MZ 1.1

In this discussion I have seen reports of success on iCab and Opera as well as Chimera. Apparently it may not work well in OmniWeb - that may or may not be an issue, depending on the audience of a particular site.

We're going to try to compile the Flash player into Konqueror and see if it works there. Anyone tried any other Linux browsers yet?

As far as plugin/no plugin goes, this technique offers an easy way of serving alternative content. I haven't attempted to address version testing other than the suggestion of using a sacrificial movie to prompt a browser update. Version testing in Flash is a subject all on its own, and hopefully one we can address in the future. I know I'd like to nail that, for my own sanity.

I think we have positive reports from nearly every browser you would reasonably expect a visitor to be using to view Flash content.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: apartness</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
If you don't like the sacrificial lamb idea, you can easily insert alternate content (a gif or text) as described in the article. Readers with the appropriate version of the Flash player will see Flash content; those with an older version - or no Flash player - will see a static image or text. No version testing needed.

For the purposes of this article, I decided NOT to convert my Illustrator file to a static gif. It seemed safe to assume that everyone who had a Flash player installed would see Flash content. We'd tested on all the browsers and platforms listed above: http://www.alistapart.com/stories/flashsatay/discuss/2/#ala-1211

I wanted readers who consider themselves die-hard standards geeks to see Flash on ALA. Wanted some of them to click their Validator bookmarklets and discover before reading a word of the article that we'd embedded Flash content without breaking XHTML validation.

The actual SWF is less than 5K. We could have embedded it WITHOUT using the Satay method: lack of streaming in IE/Win would not have been apparent. Decided it was best to go ahead and use the Satay method anyway, so readers who wished to do so could view source.

In this article, Flash is used decoratively. It's not interactive. It's not a core component. It's simply a low bandwidth, animated vector illustration. A title attribute on the markup element that surrounds the illustration is one means of providing alternate content (and is used on the article). To play it safe, you'd also provide a GIF image with alt and title attributes. That combination would deliver this application (a decorative element) to pretty much any visitor.

If you wanted to build a whole site or a whole section of a site in Flash - AND wanted the page containing the Flash to validate as XHTML (an unlikely but possible combination) - you'd need to do version testing or export as a widely used older version of Flash or use alternate content ("If you can't see the animation, download the Flash 6 player [link]").
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: basta</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
the method doesn't work for me either, I'm on IE 5.50.4522.1800 on Win 98.

I also get the weird text-box that I can't interact with, and the about:blank page title.

trying to see the movie by typing its URL will work.

Also, I can't always view source (sometimes I can, sometimes I can't).

Yes, I have the latest flash 6 player, I don't have the new beta.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: steven</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
I think using the object tag to embed multimedia elements is a great concept and one that everyone needs to become comfortable with because in xhtml 2.0 there won't be any img tags, or they're deprecated, I don't remember which--you'll have to load images with the object tag, like you should. It makes more sense, and it's more accessible, especially due to nested object tags, which is another concept I'm very excited about. Of course, xhtml 2.0 will break even in win/msie 6, but it will be an important standard for up and coming browsers. This article is, of course, a step in the right direction, and a very interesting one to me, who has been waiting for something like it; I haven't desgined anything in flash since I discovered I couldn't do it with standards. This is definitely going to propel flash, for me, into the foreground.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: hoshiez</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
thanks for sharing!!!
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: apartness</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
In XHTML 2 as it stands now there won't be any IMG tags. There also won't be links as we know them. Keep in mind XHTML is a draft and is subject to change. It may change significantly. Browser makers may be slow to support it and developers may be slow to learn it. Still, the point you raise is important. A lot of what we know may disappear from future specs. Elements like OBJECT that have been around forever but have been little used by many of us will take on increased importance.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: apartness</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
The SWFs were created in Flash MX and require Flash Player 6. I just tested the article in a fresh copy of Virtual PC running Win XP Professional and IE6. Initially there was no Flash movie. (XP in Virtual PC comes with the Flash 5 plug-in.) Right-clicking over the blank space revealed a contextual menu that read "About Flash Player 5." Clicking it took me to Macromedia where I was given the option to download Flash Player 6. I said yes. The download took a few seconds over DSL and the player configured itself automatically in the background. The Flash movie then showed up IE6.

Had we used a sacrificial test movie or exported the SWFs in an earlier Flash format, we'd have gotten fewer (if any) bug reports, I expect. Bug reports do not indicate failure - they're just more information that can help guide choices when implementing this technique.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: Keith Bell</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
Just to clarify my earlier comments at http://www.alistapart.com/stories/flashsatay/discuss/#ala-1197 and to endorse those of basta at http://www.alistapart.com/stories/flashsatay/discuss/2/#ala-1213 I was already using Flash Player 6. To be absolutely sure, I downloaded the latest release in case this made a difference. It still does not play in IE5.5/Win - the "textbox" appears instead. Like basta, I found the movie plays by entering its URL directly into the browser, so there is apparently no problem with the player.

I found that Opera 6/Win (again with the latest version of the player) does not work either, leaving a white panel where the movie should be.

I did find Mozilla 1.0/Win worked fine, however.

I think it will take more than just player version detection to get this working reliably: there does seem to be an issue relating to browser or Windows versions too. It will be interesting when I get back to my office tomorrow to check it with IE6 on Win2000 Pro.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: michael</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
Not working here as well on IE5.5 SP2, Win98SE, w/latest Flash player. Same mysterious textarea. Blank white area in Opera 6.01.

Works in all my versions of NS and Moz.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: aziz</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
using  </embed> seems to work on both browsers.. ie5.0 and netscape 7.0 and i didnt even erquire the classid nor the codebase. perhaps you could explain what ive done wrong. thanks in advance.

the markup i used are as follows:

</embed>
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: basta</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
aziz, the goal was not to use embed because it isn't standard compliant
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: timfm</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
Kudos Drew on an excellent and much needed article. I've been wrestling with Flash and standards for a while only to have recently come up with much less elegant methods involvong DTD alteration and/or [removed].

Using Satay, I now feel comfortable adding Flash content to standards compliant pages. It terms of Flash player versioning, it should be simple enough matter to integrate some Mr. Moock's Flash based fpi methods:
http://www.moock.org/webdesign/flash/detection/moockfpi/

Good to here some discussion about XHTML 2.0 as well, which is really starting to look like XML. For more see:
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/wa-xhtml/?n-wa-9192

XHTML 1.0 strict Satay for testing available here:
http://home.hawaii.rr.com/timfm/W3SWF/
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: bling</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
...don't fix it (particularly if the "fix" just leads to more hacks or failures).

In this case, if standards are important simply for the sake of standards, it ain't broke.

However, if standards are important not simply because you believe in the standards-cause, but because you are developing for an environment that is only functional with strict standards implementation - then sure, this is the method to use.

I'm not familiar with any environment that only functions with strict standards implementation.

Having said that, the article still has value for it's relatively thurough analysis and testing of the  tag, regardless of standards. I do believe the standards-driven nature of the article misses the real value of the analysis of the  tag, however.

(Simply because a page validates to a set of standards doesn't mean the code that is used isn't convoluted and/or unecessary - don't rely on standards compliance, standards grow and shrink)
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: Chris</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
There's some really nice work done here and heading in the right direction. However, I would still regard it as having some way to go and can't see the benefits of leaving the code of the past. Losing the upgrade and streaming functionality of IE is no small loss.

The author shows some bias. After doing some undocumented hacks to cater for Mozilla and Netscape he concludes "valid markup for Flash movies was possible, but only once Microsoft had fixed this problem with IE/Windows". Hmmm, personally I'd regard that Mozilla and Netscape still have some work to do on their implementation of the Object tag.

However, I don't want to distract from what is some excellent research work. Well done.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: Brett</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
but it still won't convince me to turn off my Flash killing utility when browsing.

However, the very fact there are Flash authors who are concerned about W3C standards indicates that one of these days there may actually appear worthy uses of that technology.

Brett
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: Pete</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
Call me slow and I do realize that using values of the object tag correctly being the utmost importance of this article, but one can/has been able to achieve a valid XHTML document with a flash movie embedded using http://www.moock.org/webdesign/flash/detection/moockfpi/ for quite a while.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: packman</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
Pete -

The moock FPI is not XHTML compliant due to it's use of the  tag, which is itself not XHTML compliant.

Regardless, the moock FPI scripts are a tad overrated and bloated. They specifically ignore revision numbers (which are not detectable via scripting in IE/Win) which can lead to significant problems in Flash 6 player revisions (the latest fixing some rather significant bugs in the original Flash 6 plugin).

However, moock FPI is a good starting point, just don't copy-paste and assume everything is good to go.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: Kris</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
Great, it now validates. Through more ugly hacks this has been done all along.

But what really interests me is the operation performed on the OBJECT element, an element that shows the power of graceful degredation. No more script hacking to show some stupid text or image instead of a Flash movie.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: Chris Hester</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
If you have the Flash Player 5, all you will see on the article and ALA front page is a blank space! Flash is there, you can right-click on it, but nothing animates. I didn't realize I hadn't upgraded to Flash Player 6, and no message came up asking me to upgrade. But after I upgraded, now I see animation and text.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: Unearthed Ruminator</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
I have done similar with Java applets on my website (putting them strictly in object tags) so that it valiates as XHTML 1.1 and W3C-AAA (at least according to Bobby). Glad to see it works for Flash as well.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: jens kristensen</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
Great idea, but it does not seem to work for Win98/IE5.5... If users using that configuration are of any concern to you, I suggest not using the code until a solution has been found.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: D K</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
most likely you are using the Flash 5 plugin.

I used win xp, IE 5.5, flash 5 plugin on one machine and got the textfield

win xp IE 5.5, flash 6[mx] plugin and it works fine.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: jens kristensen</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
re : most likely you are using the Flash 5 plugin.
No, as has been pointed out by a few users (and ignored by almost everyone else) there is a problem with: win98/ie5.5/flash6.

The <textarea> appears when classid="..." is removed from the object tag.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: kliertje</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
Ace hack - does that make you [url="http://www.alistapart.com/stories/soopa/index.html"]soopa famous?[/url]. But seriously.. I use mozilla and sometimes konqueror with LINUX. Neither the flash movie or image shows up in either browser. Screenshots: [url="http://www.rhubarbleaf.com/ala/flash-hack1.png" title="konqueror"]konqueror[/url] and [url="http://www.rhubarbleaf.com/ala/flash-hack2.png" title="mozilla"]mozilla[/url]. I should add though that macromedia release flash plugins for linux 'after' WIN and MacOS releases. Thanks for looking into this though.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: bruceyeah</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
I asked Dru this via email but thought I'd post it here as well in case anyone else has an idea.

I work at a small design agency where most of the work we do is small sites consisting of only a few pages. We rarely get a chance to test pages on a web server until after they are sent to the client, so most of the time we are loading html directly into the browser by double-clicking the file in Windows. The problem with this is that parameters are not passed into Flash movies unless they are being served, so the 'satay' solution will stop us from being able to test any Flash movies in web pages unless we load them onto a web server.

Is there a workaround to this problem anyone knows about?
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: Jeffrey</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
oops! I know it's not a big deal but to present the following code:

</object>

as correct. notice the empty tag of  and then the closing </object>. This was corrected halfway down the article...

nitpicky, but let's get it right, ok?
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: apartness</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
kliertje - i get a 404 not found on the URIs of your screenshot PNGs. :(
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: tommy</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
When I encountered the article using IE6 on WinXP - SP1, I saw the flash movie try to load and fail on both the intro page and the article. It left an empty space where it was suppose to be. I switched to Mozilla 1.2a (still on XP) and nothing appeared there at all on either page, not even a space. I had viewed flash movies on both these browsers in the past and knew that some were in flash 6.
I went to macromedia.com and installed flash players on both browsers and came back to ALA - voilA! it now works. I don't know why - interesting though, anyone ?
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: Paul</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
To get around the problem of detecting whether or not a browser has Flash installed/enabled is to create a page that has an http-equiv refresh tag that directs the user to a non-flash page after 10 seconds, but also has a small Flash movie embedded that takes the user to the true Flash-enabled site. This small movie could well be the 'sacrificial' movie required by the article.

I use this Flash-to-detect-Flash method successfully, as it also gets around the problem of someone who has Flash but has set their security levels up to high (IE mainly here), effectively diabling any ActiveX controls (hello Flash Player!)
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: Vince</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
Like Keith Bell and Manuel Razzari, I met the same problem of display (text box instead of the flash movie) while using Win98 SE, IE 5.0 and Flash player 6 . It worked well on NS 6.2.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: aknox</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
If omitting codebase causes the textarea bug, what happens if you use both codebase= and type= properties together?

I think it would validate, but would it fix the problem?

(Btw IE5.5 and Win98 work fine with Flash 6 for me)
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: Manuel Razzari</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
I'm not at home where this technique is not working, but I'm going to try setting a CSS background image to the OBJECT tag which, IF this works, would make the Flash object (otherwise seen as a textarea) gracefully degrade to an image if the user does not have the right plug-in. Macromedia achieves this with a bizarre bulk of javascript and vbscript (which, on the other hand, will fit into valid XHTML).

later,
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: Drew McLellan</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
Adding a classid attribute will prevent the movie from playing in many, many browsers. Trust me, I've been there with that one! 
Keep the suggestions coming, though.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: jens kristensen</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
The following code does not get rid of the textarea in win98/IE5.5/flash6, but it plays the flash movie correctly inside the textarea. Mozilla1.1 and Netscape 7.0 ignored the outside object, playing the inside object correctly. I did not test in other borwsers.

</object>
</object>

However, placing this code in an ASP file resulted in this error:

An object tag cannot be placed inside another object tag.

I don't know if this is any help...
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: Dave McFarland</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
I can't seem to see the Flash content for this article in Opera 6.01 (WIN XP Pro).

I can see other Flash content on other sites, but not for this article.

Anyone know why?
thanks.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: apartness</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
I foresee many problems with this. But I'm often wrong. Let us know what happens!

Manuel http://www.alistapart.com/stories/flashsatay/discuss/3/#ala-1244 said:

>I'm not at home where this technique is not working, but I'm going to try setting a CSS background image to the OBJECT tag which, IF this works, would make the Flash object (otherwise seen as a textarea) gracefully degrade to an image if the user does not have the right plug-in.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: Jon</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
It's a great workaround, but not really worth my time. I've created many xhtml/css/508 valid websites and sometimes the only thing that doesn't validate is the  tag. So what? It won't validate, big deal...I'm not going to come up with some crazy method of making it "validate".
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: apartness</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
Jon, I hear you but there's another way to think about this. Figure  is a hack (since it's not part of any standard spec). Figure all the little extra attributes we normally use to embed Flash in IE and Netscape are hacks. The HTML generated by Flash? A hack. A hack that works in multiple browsers, but a hack.

Consider that OBJECT is the way it's supposed to work. In that light, the clean, simple markup proposed midway through the article is anything but a hack.

Unfortunately, when done the right way, IE/Win doesn't stream the Flash. That's where the hack of using one movie to load another comes in. If IE/Win would stream SWF content embedded via the OBJECT element, we'd be all done and hack-free.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: packman</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
apartness -

I'd have to agree with Jon on this topic. Ultimately, everything is a hack, given enough time. XHTML2 will result in XHTML1 being relegated to "hack" status. Even the <font> tag was part of a set of standards at one point.

If IE/Win would stream the SWF content, the main hack in the Satay method would not be needed. However, as it is needed, it still results in making this method simply a hack. And a hack with still quite a few issues to be tested through (the textarea display bug mainly).

What we currently have is a hack, sure it isn't compliant, but it does work better than the Satay method. People see the Flash object - and isn't that the point?
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: Marc</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
Usefull article.

I have only one problem. Get parameters passed to a flash movie seems not working in mozilla, but works fine in Explorer.

I put 
data="img/menu.swf?obrir=3" in tag object and

It should work, but not.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: Mikke</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
I think that you have this problem to pass the parameters to flash because you are using an older version of the flash player plugin - after version 6 r 40 this method is supported.
Version of Flash Player after that uses the new Mozilla api for plugins and are scritpable.

Great article by the way!
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: Paul J White</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
If you use absolute URLs rather than relative for the "data" then Moz and Opera work fine (on W2K) with the inclusion of the codebase attribute - much better than having to put a 1k empty swf elsewhere on the site. I knocked up a quick page if anyone with different browser/platform combinations wants to test it and get back to me:
http://www.bw3.co.uk/flashtest.html

Cheers, Paul.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: apartness</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
Paul:

Your test page worked for me in Mozilla 1.1/Mac, IE5.1/Mac, and IE6/Win XP, all with Flash Player 6 installed. Very nice page btw! Even the source code is pretty.

jeffrey
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: apartness</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
In http://www.alistapart.com/stories/flashsatay/discuss/3/#ala-1251 packman said:

>Ultimately, everything is a hack, given enough time. XHTML2 will result in XHTML1 being relegated to "hack" status.

XHTML 2 is a science project. If it moves forward as currently written, and if browser makers and developers support it as currently written, then IMG, 
, and even A HREF= may one day be viewed as hacks. Maybe.

If XHTML 2 is adopted as written, there's no guarantee that XHTML 1 will be deprecated. The two specs may coexist, each serving a different need. In which case, existing markup standards would not be considered hacks.

I understand the point you're making. There is a tension between two views. One view suggests that each new standard should build on what came before, creating a forward-compatible upgrade path. The other view says, if what came before was broken (even for theoretical reasons) it should be replaced with something closer to a pure theoretical ideal.

The latter view seems to be guiding the XHTML 2 draft, which dispenses with many traditional HTML elements:

http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-xhtml2-20020805/

But it's still a working draft.

We're a bit far afield from this article's topic, though not from its reason for being, which is to bring embedded multimedia elements into conformance with existing markup specs AND MAKE IT WORK. Since we don't know what W3C is thinking (they publish specs, not strategies or rationales) we don't know if they plan to deprecate all existing markup specs one day.

XHTML 1.0 Compatible is the current spec and the one nearly every browser supports, and the idea of this article is to be able to use that spec to properly embed multimedia elements. If that can be done it seems worth doing to me.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: -b-</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
Cool article. I've been doing it this way

[removed]
 //<![CDATA[
 if (navigator.mimeTypes && navigator.mimeTypes["application/x-shockwave-flash"]){
 [removed]('');
 }
 //]]>
[removed]
</object>

on pages like http://www.davidsonbicycles.com and it validates http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://davidsonbicycles.com/html/home.shtml. The files I'm using for clients aren't large enough to stream, but I see no reason why it wouldn't in IE and Netscape.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: -b-</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://davidsonbicycles.com/html/home.shtml

The validator url has a period next to and was failing.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: Ozon</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
Re. what's being called the 'textarea' bug in IE/Win: this seems to be part of a more general problem with the way that browser handles the  tag. I first ran into this when I tried using  instead of  for images (got inspired by the XHTML 2.0 draft!), and found that while Mozilla (1+, at least), Opera (6), and IE/Mac (5.x, on OS 9 and X) correctly displayed the images as expected, IE/Win 5.5 and 6 failed, in a way that sounds very similar to what people are finding here with Flash.

So, in theory, IE/Win fully supports , but in practice it's likely a different matter. Unfortunately, I haven't yet found any general workaround (obviously, for images, we can just use , just confirmation: e.g., http://www.robinlionheart.com/stds/html4/ reports that IE/Win doesn't handle nested objects correctly, and that it 'destroys pages that use image objects' -- my experience exactly. With a test page of a single image (jpeg, using the data attribute), I've tried in several instances of IE/Win, and found that 5.5sp2 and 6sp1 on NT displayed just a blank textarea-like box in place of an image , while 6sp1 on XP displayed the image, but in a textarea-like box that was smaller than the image and that had active scrollbars. (The test page is here, if you're curious: http://individual.utoronto.ca/ozon/object_test.html) The oddities with Flash (e.g., not streaming, as mentioned in the article, etc.) appear to be just more eccentricities in the way IE/Win handles .

While IE/Win's eccentric ways of rendering  seem to confirm some people's experiences of the 'textarea' problem, it doesn't explain it -- i.e., I can't offer a description of the exact conditions under which  works and does not work in IE/Win. Any ideas?
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: technophobe</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
have a look at http://www.redmanjones.co.uk/
you'll find flash embeded in the site
and it validates
whats your problem?

all you have to do is add 'escape' characters before the closing tags in the [removed] parts of the script.

ie [removed](' <\/OBJECT>');

simple.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: kliertje</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
Re: But seriously.. I use mozilla and sometimes konqueror with LINUX. Neither the flash movie or image shows up in either browser. Screenshots: [img]http://www.rhubarbleaf.com/ala/flash-hack1.png[/img] =konqueror
and [img]http://www.rhubarbleaf.com/ala/flash-hack2.png[/img] =mozilla
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: kliertje</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
Pauls test at http://www.bw3.co.uk/flashtest.html works fine in mozilla on Linux and the html validates :)
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: John</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
I just have to say that, while it's very cool what has been done, I'm not going to change the way I implement Flash, nor am I going to spend any time finding a way that makes it 100% standards complaint.

Browsers arent popping up giant flashing red windows that say "This site is not compliant with blah blah blah." No...the webpage loads fine, and everything works just as it should. Unless your target audience for the site always visits w3c.org and attempts to validate your URL prior to visiting the site, you dont need to be so strict. What's next? Are you going to complain that the blind cant view [hear] Flash content?? Or maybe that the deaf cant hear [read] the musical notes of the background track?!

Get real...the article is definately cool, but it isn't necessary. When all is said and done, even IE 10.0 and Netscape/Mozilla 9.0 still won't display Flash MX9 content properly.

Steven Tyler said it best... "Dream On! Dream On! Dream On! Dream On! Dream-a-dream-a-dream-a dream-a. Dream On!"
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: Larry Israel</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
-b- wrote:
 
[removed] 
//<![CDATA[ 
if (navigator.mimeTypes && navigator.mimeTypes["application/x-shockwave-flash"]){ 
[removed](' tag with JavaScript in order to claim standards compliance seems disingenuous. This hack has the simple function of hiding the  tag from the W3C's validator software, that's all.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: apartness</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
a bit off-topic but [img]http://www.rhubarbleaf.com/ala/flash-hack1.png[/img] is very hard to read. wouldn't you be better off with the default style sheet?
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: Matt Round</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
"Get real...the article is definately cool, but it isn't necessary."

As others have often said elsewhere, validation isn't really an end in itself. What we're trying to do is get to a position where we can follow standards, making mark-up cleaner and turning validation into a useful debugging tool.

The detective work people are doing here is valuable, it's another tiny step towards simpler development and better sites. I'll certainly be looking into the techniques mentioned.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: michael</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
While the flash movie in the article did not play using Win98/Op6.05, it does play in the new 7.0 beta1.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: John Colby</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
INHO validation is the first step towards code that is accessible for altrnative browsing devices. If your markup doesn't validate then it has less of a chance of beiung rendered understandibly in PDAs, Web TV, phones and of course speech and braille readers. It is often tempting to think that, in the case of speech readers, blind is blind, but the majority of people who have visual impairments have some vision (like, do you wear spectacles or contacts??) and could see something of the Flash rendering but not be able to pick out the detail. Valid code renders better in all sorts of alternative devices.

In my mind its a non-argument *not* to validate - it is, after all the way that anyone can write to assist the vast majority of people. This of course applies far beyond this article into the whole realm of web authoring.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: packman</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
John -

I agree that validating to standards is good practice, when possible. It will benefit the site on many levels, one of which is potential accessibility.

However, validation does not equal accessibility. Accessibility is an entirely different process when creating a website.

In the case of the Satay method, accessibility is not the consideration. In fact, as many readers have pointed out, the Satay method is less-accessible then a non-standards compliant block of code (specifically, common browsers that correctly render the non-standards code, incorrectly render the standards code - therefore making this method less accessible).

I'm not sure I fully understand your apparent view that non-valid code is completely inappropriate. There is and will always be some aspects of non-valid code that are more effective than valid code in reaching the majority of people. This is the nature of versioning of the W3C standards implementations.

I see this alot - "pure valid code is the only correct code" - and that seems to be a case of missing the forest for the trees. In reality, the only correct code is the code that works where you want it to work.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: John</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
Okay okay...so I read my post again just now and maybe I came off a little too harsh, and possibly misunderstood.

Bottom line for me is that the web and the tools will always be changing. And when youve got so many companies fighting with each other, while the end-users just want cross-compatability, you wind up *having* to use "unclean and invalid" code for it to work. Sure, it's cool when people dig around and try and find fixes...but really...by the time the "fix" [or hack] is in place, new versions of all the browsers and plugins will be out, the "fix" wont be necessary anymore [and could actually CAUSE problems], and you've wasted all that time.

Rather than look for fixes, why not lobby the right companies to produce the right code? Send an email to Macromedia complaining...send one to Microsoft...send one to apple....and send one to netscape.

Or you could just be like me and use what they give you. Because you know there will always be problems, and if they fix the one your asking about now, they're not fixing the one you're going to absolutely need tomorrow.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: Peterman</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
"Bottom line for me is that the web and the tools will always be changing."

Of course, but they can change in different ways. W3C standards are generally made to be as forwards- and backwards-compatible as possible.

"by the time the "fix" [or hack] is in place, new versions of all the browsers and plugins will be out, the "fix" wont be necessary anymore [and could actually CAUSE problems]"

The purpose of this article wasn't to create invalid and/or bloated code to make something work in more current browsers. The purpose was to find *valid* code that works in as many current browsers as possible. As the code is valid, it will actually work better in newer browsers, provided that they continue to improve their standards support - and IE, Netscape, Mozilla and Opera are all getting better at it.

"Rather than look for fixes, why not lobby the right companies to produce the right code?"

That's exactly what people have been doing for years, and it's finally working. I hope you've at least glanced at http://www.webstandards.org/ ?

"Or you could just be like me and use what they give you."

Which mostly, these days, is W3C standards.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: Andrew Clover</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
> create a page that has an http-equiv refresh tag that directs the user to a non-flash page after 10 seconds, but also has a small Flash movie embedded

Be careful with this: remember meta-refresh is also a nasty hack that isn't always supported and won't be followed by spiders. If you do this, *always* include a text link to the content itself. Also meta-refresh has a tendency to screw up the back button - JavaScript 'location.replace()' might be better for this, again with the caveat about text backup.

Another issue with Flash is that, like all ActiveX objects in IE, if you go to a page with a SWF and haven't got Flash (or a new enough version) installed it'll open a dialogue asking if you want to install Flash, rather than just using the object-tag-contents as alternative content. And it will do this again and again, for every SWF it encounters, which is incredibly irritating.

Even worse, if you have different settings for the security options 'Download signed ActiveX controls' and 'Download unsigned ActiveX controls' (as is the default), IE will download the whole Flash installer just to check whether the file is signed or not, before asking if you want to install it. This eats bandwidth and makes your site load slower.

Even turning ActiveX off completely doesn't solve the problem, as IE then complains every time it comes to a page with a SWF or other control on. For no reason, since there is perfectly good alternative content available, but that's IE for you.

If you leave off the 'codebase' attribute so that IE does not attempt to download Flash, it instead contacts 'ocget' at microsoft.com which attempts to look up where the software can be downloaded. This also slows loading down, and lets Microsoft know who's accessing your page unnecessarily. You can use a fake codebase to persuade IE not to bother fetch anything, but it's tricky... codebase="view-source:about:blank"' works across browser versions, but may be responsible for lack of stability in IE 5.0. codebase="[removed]" is stable on IE5, but banned in IE6SP1, where the codebase attribute is a bit more restrictive. Does anyone know of any others?

To get around all this *and* work cross-browser, it's going to need a fair bit of scripting, I reckon.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: Drew McLellan</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
I'm really enjoying reading the responses to this article and would encourage anyone who has suggested an idea to find time to test and develop it.
One of the big advantages of Satay that hasn't been discussed much is that of slimmer code. Macromedia's twice-cooked code is extremely bloated - I like Satay because it's nice and tight. What methods are you guys using to minimize the code you're using to embed Flash movies?
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: Chris von Rosenvinge</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
I found the Satay article provocative and useful. I especially like the notion of avoiding Javascript and VBscript redirects. It seems to me that that's where the big saving comes in, not only in code but in waiting for the redirects to execute. Apart from validating, the Satay code is more elegant than the conventional OBJECT/EMBED code, but doesn't save that much code. One elegant feature is that the Satay child code leads to a non-Flash source, whereas the EMBED portion of the conventional code presents only an alternative way to get the same swf file.

The principle problem, it seems to me, is that the Satay code does not work on Windows 95 and 98, presenting what some readers have described as a text box. (That reminds me more of the popup windows on such platforms, which have a scrollbar and arrows top and bottom even if the content can't be scrolled.) Somehow the focus on testing for a broad range of browsers obscured the fact that browsers don't necessarily work the same on all platforms. I hope someone comes up with a solution for Windows 95 and 98.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: Peterman</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
"The principle problem, it seems to me, is that the Satay code does not work on Windows 95 and 98"

I use Win98, 1st edition. It works for me, in Opera 6.05 and Mozilla 1.1. I haven't got Flash (at least not a recent version) installed in IE 4, so I don't know if it would work there.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: Phinetzia</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
The only work around I can think of is to download a web server, run it on your local computer, and point your browser to your local IP. It's not good - it's a work around - but it will work.

If you use Windows, I recommend:
SimpleServer:WWW (~200k)
http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/network/sswww.htm

If not, there's a pretty good chance you'll find one at:
http://www.serverwatch.com/
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: setmajer</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
This one is inferior in terms of markup size, and it definitely isn't following the 'spirit' of the standards, but the W3C validator says it's kosher:

</object>

Then add the following to your stylesheet:

.notIE {
 display: none;
 }

What it does is use IE's conditional comments. The IE-specific object tag is hidden by the comments for everyone else, but IE sees the comments as a conditional. It's proprietary MS crap, but since it's solving a proprietary MS problem, why not?

You can see an example at: http://www.setmajer.com/test/flash_object.html

Just be forgiving regarding the Flash; I haven't touched the app in over a year, and what few skills I had have atrophied somewhat. ;-)
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: setmajer</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
1. I haven't tested whether it will do the streaming bit (a bit advanced for me at the moment)

2. IE 4 will get the 'everyone else' bit, so no codebase for that browser; given that IE 4 is rapidly approaching extinction, I'm not /that/ concerned.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: joel</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
It's a good article but I believe the author didn't done extensive research (i.e. test it extensively through out all platforms not only virutally I mean literally testing it on 3 four machines different hardware softwares setting) Which I did about 9 months ago. Cos I come with a similar idea works fine on certain platform. But fail on the other so I just have to ditch it all together (again the problem is for the client end as long as it works they are happy and I received the money on the other hand would like to get it done the right way)
I don't know how many of you are working on mobile XHTML at the moment. I just started it. The XHTML is much more strick than the one you use on a computer's browser. Now the big question is better to stick to the standard now or you will need extra time later to fix your problem if you move things further. I believe this is what the author's intension.

The problem again, the mobile world is just a s chaotic as the browser world. I try not to point fingers at M$ but they do get there first (also macromedia blend to the big boys leave the other with no choose) with the CE browser on the handheld have the flash plugin. From a content provider point of view. They want to delivery. From a desinger point of view they want that to work and delivery on time. From M$ point of view they don't care what the other think they just do what ever they want (side note if any one read the business page. Windows Operation Division make 2.4 Billions Dollar on a turn over of about 2.9 Billions can you image that what kind of profit margin is that??? That's why they can afford to do what ever they want)

So the ultimate solution is make a lot of noise to Macromedia. Make it as your wish list (you could do this over there) Hope they change this in the future release)

At the mean time we all have to stick to what ever that works for us :(

Joel
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: basta</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
I like setmajer's idea, and I'm shure that it can be perfected.
Although it is a hack, it would allow IE5.5 to display the flash content properly.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: basta</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
I just realised that I still see the text area in your example, setmajer...
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: basta</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
I got it to work, but it's ugly as hell...
IE 5.5 needs the classid and the codebase to work, and I used setmajer's idea...

</object>
 <div style="display:none;">
<![endif]-->

noflash.gif
</object>

it's back to an other twice cooked method... but this one validates.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: basta</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
here's a better version using conditional comments which doesn't use css to hide the content, and which only serves the alternative content to IE 5.5 :

<!--[if IE 5.5000]>

</object>
<![endif]-->

noflash.gif
</object>

it's still twiced cooked, but it validates, so it's better than macromedia's twice cooked method.
and because it works (hopefully) on all browsers, then it might be better than the satay method (if you want backward compatibility...) even though it's a hack.

I don't know about the streaming in my version, though...
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: setmajer</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
Your conditional syntax is flawed. you're using:

That was my original idea, but MSDN says that for 'downlevel visible' conditionals (that is, conditionals that hide the content from IE but not other browsers) you have to use:

<![if ! IE 5.5000]>

Which, of course, doesn't validate.

In my testing, your syntax does not hide the second  tag in IE 5.5 Win2K.

The other problem I see with your solution as-written is that IE5 and 6 on Win will still get the second object tag, because you're testing whether the browser is IE 5.5.

Further testing indicates that on my Win2K installation, IE 5.5 won't show the movie unless you have the classid attribute in the object tag (I installed the Flash control for the first time today, so I *know* it is v. 6--unless MM is distributing 5 for some reason ;-). Worse yet, it gets pissy about having a conditional inside an  tag, with unpredictable results.

The following appears to work on Moz 1.1/Mac, IE 5.1.6/Mac, and IE 5-6/Win2K, all using the Flash 6 plugin:

</object>

Updated code at: http://www.setmajer.com/test/flash_object.html

Between the verbosity of the markup and the reliance on CSS, I'm thinking the Satay method--sacrificial movie and all--is probably superior in most instances.
</article>
<article>
<h1>Posted by: Milus</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
Hello...
I'm facing tableless layout (with XHTML and CSS2) right now. I just tried to insert a flash movie into the page and I tested your "hack" with different browser.
The flash player is version 6.
It works great on Mozilla, on Opera 6 and 7 beta, on Netscape 6 and 7 but it didn't work on IE6 SP1.
My OS is windows XP.
Bye!
MILUS
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<h1>Posted by: Robert Marcello</h1>
<p>2012-01-31T13:00:49+00:00</p>
I haven't been able to get this to work correctly on Win2k in Netscape 4.x or 7 (or Mozilla). Netscape 4 (no flash plugin) crashes completely and 7 (which for some reason installed with the Flash 3 plugin by default) refuse to display my alternate child , and instead just show a white box where the Flash isn't showing up.

/banners/bnr_whatmakes_main.gif
</object>

This works great in IE 6, Opera, and Netscape 6, but I have Flash 5+ installed on them. The alternate image issue seems to be the problem.

Any ideas, anybody? I can't have people looking at a big empty box.

Thanks in advance.
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