Providing alternative images if Adobe Flash isn't available - html

Are there any ways providing an alternate GIF/PNG image, in case the user has no Adobe Flash installed and/or deactivated.
I’ve found recommendations, like the following from W3C, which determine via JavaScript the existence of Adobe Flash on the client: W3C Providing alternative images
Honestly, I would prefer a non JS technique. I’m thinking of some XHTML tag, equivalent to <noscript>. (like <noobject> if the object (in our case Flash) can’t be displayed/loaded).
The reason for needing this separation is the following:
The bank I’m working for will preferably display their banners in Flash format. In case it isn’t possible a simple image should be shown.
In the past it was solved very likely in the way mentioned before. We’re currently working on a design refresh and that’s where I stumbled upon this piece of code which makes me wonder if it’s really the most elegant and compatible way of doing so.
Another idea that strikes me: Is it actually possible to load Flash-objects in a JavaScript disabled environment?

Actually having flash installed but javascript turned off is a valid scenario. This should work across most browsers:
<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" width="800" height="600" id="flashContent">
<param name="movie" value="flash.swf" />
<!--[if !IE]>-->
<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="flash.swf" width="800" height="600">
<!--<![endif]-->
<img src="(...)" alt="Put your alternate content here" />
<!--[if !IE]>-->
</object>
<!--<![endif]-->
</object>

I use the following code for graceful degradation. It works well.
<!--[if !IE]> -->
<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="flash.swf" width="500" height="100">
<!-- <![endif]-->
<!--[if IE]>
<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000"
codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,0,0"
width="500" height="100">
<param name="movie" value="flash.swf" />
<!--><!--dgx-->
<param name="loop" value="false">
<param name="menu" value="false">
<param name="quality" value="high">
<img src="flash_replacement.png" width="500" height="100" alt="No Flash">
</object>
<!-- <![endif]-->

I don't know why you want to avoid javascript, it is the best solution when dealing with Flash.
using the SWFObjects Library (the best known so far for the matter) you can do this:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<title> My Home Page </title>
<meta name="viewport" content="width=780">
<script type="text/javascript" src="swfobject.js"></script>
</head>
<body>
<div id="splashintro">
<img src="splash_noflash.png" />
</div>
<script type="text/javascript">
var so = new SWFObject("csplash.swf", "my_intro", "300", "240", "8", "#338899");
so.write("splashintro");
</script>
</body>
</html>
what the script does is replace the splashintro div with the flash file, if the browser does not support Flash, then does nothing and the splash_noflash.png will be shown.
P.S. With this technique you are ready for the iPhone, instead of showing the blue cube, it will show the image :)

I find using inline styling to do the trick.
For example:
<div style="background-image: url('...');">
<object>
/* Embedded Flash */
</object>
</div>

We can provide an alternate GIF/PNG image, in case the user has no Adobe Flash installed and/or deactivated.
<object id="flashcontent classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" width="550px" height="400px">
<param name="movie" value="mymovie.swf" />
<!--[if !IE]>-->
<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="mymovie.swf" width="550px" height="400px">
<!--<![endif]-->
<p>
Fallback or 'alternate' content goes here.
This content will only be visible if the SWF fails to load.
</p>
<!--[if !IE]>-->
</object>
<!--<![endif]-->
</object>
And also add this...
<script type="text/javascript">
swfobject.registerObject("flashcontent", "9", "/path/to/expressinstall.swf");
</script>

I have written an easy way to do this in CSS - no extra JavaScript at all.
Name your ID/Class where your Flash movie resides and use a background image. Wrap your Flash movie within that div.
For example:
<div ID="MyFlashMovie"><object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" width="800" height="600" id="flashContent">
<param name="movie" value="flashMovie.swf" />... etc., etc.</object>
</div> etc.
Then in your CSS:
#MyFlashMovie {
background: url("alternateGraphic.png");
background-repeat: no-repeat;
height: XXpx;
width: XXpx;
}
When the Flash isn't available, say on the iphone/pad, the graphic will display. The only drawback with this, that I have found, is that if your Flash movie uses a transparent background, you will see the alt graphic through the transitions. Just make a solid color within the Flash movie as your lowest layer (make sure it's the same bg color as the website) and it will look fine.
~GreaseJunkie

Related

Playing flash video full screen

We are posting a video in our website.Video created by Adobe Captivate(.swf file). I am doing this by using object tag. The problem is flash player doesn't have fullscreen option.So we have to set size of flash using width and height parameters. But Its not possible to give width and height suitable for all resolutions.So is there any way to give video height relative to PC resolution? Or is there any way to play flash in full screen? By the way we are using flash player 11.6 with active_x
UPDATE
I have tried your swiffit method..here is my code
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title></title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<script type="text/javascript" src="swfobject.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="swffit.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
swfobject.registerObject("myFlashContent", "11.6.0");
swffit.fit("myFlashContent", 1000, 590);
</script>
</head>
<body>
<div>
<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" width="800" height="600" id="myFlashContent">
<param name="movie" value="D:\desktop\BS demo.swf">
<!--[if !IE]>-->
<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="D:\desktop\BS demo.swf" width="800" height="600">
<!--<![endif]-->
<a href="http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer">
<img src="http://www.adobe.com/images/shared/download_buttons/get_flash_player.gif" alt="Get Adobe Flash player">
</a>
<!--[if !IE]>-->
</object>
<!--<![endif]-->
</object>
</div>
</body>
</html>
But fullscreen not working.. Is there anything i am missing? do i have to change anything in swiffit.js file?
Looking at your code, I see one problem, that is you seem to have forgotten to include the allow full screen parameter. try adding
<param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" />
I have no previous experience with actionscript, so I won't be able to help you with your .swf file, but I'm sure you will find this article about working with full screen mode
useful.

Firefox shows random characters instead of fallback image when Shockwave Flash is disabled

I have the following code to display the swf object on the page. It works well in all browsers. However, if shockwave flash turned off in Firefox, it won't fallback into image and show bunch of characters instead looking like "CWS q�x��wX�Y�7z�..." All other browsers fallback to the image. I verified that we serve application/x-shockwave-flash MIME type on our server.
<script type="text/javascript">
swfobject.registerObject("fd_flash","8.0.0");
</script>
<div>
<object height="376" id="fd_flash" width="940">
<param name="movie" value="path/file.swf" />
<param name="wmode" value="opaque" />
<!--[if !IE]>-->
<object data="path/file.swf" height="376" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="940">
<!--<![endif]-->
<div><img src="path/image.jpg" /></div>
<!--[if !IE]>-->
</object>
<!--<![endif]-->
</object>
</div>
Thank you!
You could try another way of using swfobject. Add a link in your <head> to your swfobject.js file, then in your <body> put this:
<div id="yourFlashDiv">
<!-- ALTERNATE CONTENT GOES HERE -->
<p>This paragraph will show if your Flash content won't</p>
<!-- FLASH CONTENT GOES HERE -->
<script type="text/javascript">
// <![CDATA[
var so = new SWFObject("path/file.swf", "SwfTitleGoesHere", "376", "940", "8", "#FFFFFF");
so.addParam("wmode", "opaque");
so.write("yourFlashDiv");
// ]]>
</script>
</div>
This is what I've used for swf display, and it has failed gracefully on every browser I've tested. Hope this helps

"Allow" Button for flash content cannot be clicked in Mac Chrome

I'm using Mac Chrome 8.0.552.237
It seems like whenever I embed flash content in html and open it in chrome when my flash content requests camera access and i need to click "allow" button in the dialog it never recognizes the click. It works fine in firefox. I just simply can't understand why it wont work in chrome. I use swfobject, and i used http://www.bobbyvandersluis.com/swfobject/generator/index.html to make the html code just to make sure i wasn't making any mistakes.
any ideas what I could be doing that causes it to not let me click allow?
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en" xml:lang="en">
<head>
<title></title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
<script type="text/javascript" src="swfobject.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
swfobject.registerObject("MyFlashContent", "10.1.0", "expressInstall.swf");
</script>
</head>
<body>
<div>
<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" width="480" height="800" id="MyFlashContent" align="middle">
<param name="movie" value="MyFlashContent.swf" />
<param name="play" value="true" />
<param name="loop" value="true" />
<param name="quality" value="high" />
<param name="scale" value="noscale" />
<!--[if !IE]>-->
<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="MyFlashContent.swf" width="480" height="800" align="middle">
<param name="play" value="true" />
<param name="loop" value="true" />
<param name="quality" value="high" />
<param name="scale" value="noscale" />
<!--<![endif]-->
<a href="http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer">
<img src="http://www.adobe.com/images/shared/download_buttons/get_flash_player.gif" alt="Get Adobe Flash player" />
</a>
<!--[if !IE]>-->
</object>
<!--<![endif]-->
</object>
</div>
</body>
</html>
EDIT:
Since it seems like the issue might actually be with my actionscrip code, i'll post how i attached the camera.
var youCam:Camera = Camera.getCamera();
you_cam.attachCamera(youCam);
as you can see I have it attached about as simple as it can get, I actually have this right at the top of my code to place the camera on the stage. This works fine when i test it, and it works fine in firefox.
I have no idea why, but because of the large size of the swf canvas, i learned in chrome i had to click the resize corner of the browser and make the window small and then bring it back to the regular size then it would work. no idea why, but this was only hapening in chrome. i fixed the issue by making the overall size of my swf smaller.
Try setting the css display property to 'inline-block'
I had a similar problem. I was using a swf webcam plugin and, on Chrome 21 only, it was not allowing users to click allow. I ended up fixing it by changing it's css 'display' from 'block' to 'inline-block'.
Hope it helps.
I've had an issue like this before, but it wasn't the browser nor the embedding, it was the example code for enabling the webcam (I think this code even came from the Adobe live docs ffs). The issue was that the camera polling already started, before the allow button was pushed. The polling (some augmented reality experiment) was so heavy, that the allow button only registered the click every 1 in 10 times or so. By putting of the camera polling till after the status-event returned with camera.muted == false, I solved my problem.
Maybe it's worth a try. Cheers, EP
Edit: Code example for the handler
var youCam:Camera = Camera.getCamera();
youCam.addEventListener(StatusEvent.STATUS, handleCameraStatus);
...
private function handleCameraStatus(e:StatusEvent):void {
if (e.code == "Camera.Unmuted") {
you_cam.attachCamera(youCam);
} else if (e.code == "Camera.Muted") {
// display message so the user might try again.
}
}

Separate Objects for IE and FF

I'm trying to embed my java applet using the object tag in html. While trying to research how to accomplish this task I came across this SO post.
when trying to put the code into action on my page it looks a little something like this...
<object name="Battleship"
width="750"
height="800"
classid="java:ApplicationApplet.class"
type="application/x-java-applet">
<object classid="clsid:8AD9C840-044E-11D1-B3E9-00805F499D93"
codebase="http://java.sun.com/update/1.5.0/jinstall-1_5_0-windows-i586.cab"
height="800"
width="750">
<param name="code" value="ApplicationApplet" />
Your browser is not Java enabled.
</object>
</object>
However, when I run this it crashes IE, but is fine in FF. I'm curious if there's something I'm missing to distinguish that IE should run the inner object and FF and others the outer object?
Thanks guys!
Yes the conditional comments
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conditional_comment
<!--[if !IE]> Firefox and others will use outer object -->
<object name="Battleship"
width="750"
height="800"
classid="java:ApplicationApplet.class"
type="application/x-java-applet">
<!--<![endif]-->
<!-- MSIE (Microsoft Internet Explorer) will use inner object -->
<object classid="clsid:8AD9C840-044E-11D1-B3E9-00805F499D93"
codebase="http://java.sun.com/update/1.5.0/jinstall-1_5_0-windows-i586.cab"
height="800"
width="750">
<param name="code" value="ApplicationApplet" />
Your browser is not Java enabled.
</object>
<!--[if !IE]> close outer object -->
</object>
<!--<![endif]-->

How might I update this code

<object height="25" width="75" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=5,0,0,0" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000">
<param value="http://click-here-to-listen.com/players/iaPlay13.swf?x=1058286910FTRZGK" name="movie"/>
<param value="high" name="quality"/>
<param value="#FFFFFF" name="bgcolor"/>
<param value="opaque" name="wmode"/>
<embed height="25" width="75" wmode="opaque" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" quality="high" src="http://click-here-to-listen.com/players/iaPlay13.swf?x=1058286910FTRZGK"/>
</object>
I am having to insert this legacy markup into a new site that I'm building. Problem is its using an <embed> tag.
Would I just do away with the <embed> and put some content in as an alternative, for those that do not have flash? Basically I'm just trying to bring this piece of html into the 21st century.
You can nest object elements to display alternatives. The W3C explains it here. I copied a snippet below:
One significant consequence of the OBJECT element's design is that it offers a mechanism for specifying alternate object renderings; each embedded OBJECT declaration may specify alternate content types. If a user agent cannot render the outermost OBJECT, it tries to render the contents, which may be another OBJECT element, etc.
In the following example, we embed several OBJECT declarations to illustrate how alternate renderings work. A user agent will attempt to render the first OBJECT element it can, in the following order: (1) an Earth applet written in the Python language, (2) an MPEG animation of the Earth, (3) a GIF image of the Earth, (4) alternate text.
<P> <!-- First, try the Python applet -->
<OBJECT title="The Earth as seen from space"
classid="http://www.observer.mars/TheEarth.py">
<!-- Else, try the MPEG video -->
<OBJECT data="TheEarth.mpeg" type="application/mpeg">
<!-- Else, try the GIF image -->
<OBJECT data="TheEarth.gif" type="image/gif">
<!-- Else render the text -->
The <STRONG>Earth</STRONG> as seen from space.
</OBJECT>
</OBJECT>
</OBJECT>
I recommend that you use swfobject which is a cross platform, open source library to display flash on your pages.
http://code.google.com/p/swfobject/
There are a variety of ways to load the flash and the alternative (non-flash) content. For example the following code could replace your code:
<script type="text/javascript" src="swfobject.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
swfobject.embedSWF("http://click-here-to-listen.com/players/iaPlay13.swf?x=1058286910FTRZGK",
"myContent", "25", "75", "9.0.0");
</script>
<div id="myContent">
<p>Alternative content</p>
</div>
Basically, you should keep embed, because it is a fallback for some old browsers. It might hurt validation of page, but as long as you know why it is there, it is OK.
At least that's the way Adobe officially recommends: Macromedia Flash OBJECT and EMBED tag syntax
You are right to want to do code for XXIth century, but we have to deal with browser from previous millennium... :-)
I use function AC_FL_RunContent for embedding flash objects - it's good because it supports all browsers and is recommended by Adobe.
More is here:
They also suggest using <object> tag instead of <embed>
I found this code on the web (from a usability site) which caters for IE and others, and I use it on my flash pages (I've changed it to your code):
<!--[if !IE]> -->
<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="http://click-here-to-listen.com/players/iaPlay13.swf?x=1058286910FTRZGK" width="75" height="25">
<!-- <![endif]-->
<!--[if IE]>
<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=5,0,0,0" width="75" height="25">
<param name="movie" value="http://click-here-to-listen.com/players/iaPlay13.swf?x=1058286910FTRZGK" />
<!--><!--dgx-->
<param name="loop" value="false">
<param name="menu" value="false">
<param name="quality" value="high">
</object>
<!-- <![endif]-->