What does this mean to you, the average user of SWFObject? It means you no longer need to place a copy of the SWFObject script on your own web server, and can instead link to the copy hosted on Google’s servers.

If you are unfamiliar with the AJAX Library API, you can find more information on the Google code site, or continue reading below for some simple examples to get you up and running quickly. SWFObject may not be in the docs on the AJAX Libraries API site yet because it was just added recently, but the team is working on the updated docs now, so check back later if you don’t see the SWFObject specific information.

Now for the business: I imagine that most SWFObject users most likely only use SWFObject and none of the other libraries hosted on the AJAX Libraries site. So here’s a direct link to SWFObject v2.1 that you can simply place on your site, and that’s it:

http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/swfobject/2.1/swfobject.js

Yep, that’s it. Just replace the path to your local copy of swfobject.js with this one and you are done.

Another option is to use the google.load call which is documented here.

The project has moved over to the code.google.com website instead of my blog, so go over there and check out the docs and consider upgrading, as the new version is a lot more flexible than v1.5.

I’d like to give a huge thank you to all of the people who contributed and helped us test out the new release, those no longer with us, and of course to Bobby who is easily the biggest contributor to this new version (and has a new design up on his blog!) and has kept the project pushing forward at a good pace.

Moving foward, we’ll be continuing to work with Adobe to get the word out about SWFObject 2.

The new version is a complete rewrite from SWFObject 1.5, so we’ll need lots of testing before we officially launch it and replace the older SWFObject and UFO scripts, and since we have Adobe involved, they will be including this embed system in the Adobe authoring tools in the future.

The SWFObject project is moving to Google Code, where you can download the source from svn, grab the latest build, or file bugs or read documentation.

I’ve also created a new Google Group for SWFObject support questions and discussion.

If you are at MAX today, our presentation is at 2:45pm in room W-196c and it’s called “Flash Detection and Embedding: An open source solution”.

If you can’t make it today, we’ll be doing it again tomorrw (Wednesday) at 11am in room W-185d.

We also announced that we are now working with Micheal Williams from Adobe – the author of the Adobe Flash Detection kit to make sure SWFFix can cover all the bases and be used by anyone. Very cool!

Go check out the dev blog and grab the files, then read the docs and try it out. Feedback is very welcome, so soak it in and let us know what you think.

I’ll be giving a talk called Progressive Enhancement with Flash that will cover stuff like:

• Using SWFObject (maybe SWFFix by then) to embed Flash content
• Using progressive enhancement to allow search engines to properly index your content and increase SEO for Flash websites
• Flash content vs. Flash style, and how to treat them differently
• Deep linking and back button support in Flash

And a few other areas. I should also be able to talk about SWFFix a bit (hopefully it will be fully released by then, but who knows).

Go check out the Flashbelt page for more info. I can’t give you a direct link to my session, but it’s listed there in the session list. Hopefully I’ll see some of you there!

There’s really only one large change to the code, and a few bug fixes I’ll outline here:

1. Express Install functionality has changed. You no longer need to add any Actionscript to your fla or otherwise modify your project’s files. The new syntax and functionality is outlined on the SWFObject page in the Using Express Install section.
2. Fixed a bug that was causing IE6 to crash intermittently if users had a certain version of Flash Player 6 installed and the page was refreshed a few times
3. Added support for IE Mobile devices that have Flash Player installed (more details here)
4. Added support for style tags on the object/embed tags outputted from SWFObject. This allows it to be used with swfIR without having to include the SWFObject code multiple times.

This also may be the last major release of SWFObject. If you haven’t already heard, the SWFFix project will be attempting to replace SWFObject as the de-facto Flash embedding standard. The project is still in the alpha stage, but is looking quite promising. So until then, enjoy!

We’ve put up a dev blog on the site, and will be asking for help and feedback throughout the development cycle, so head over and watch the blog for updates in the coming weeks.

Bobby also has a great A List Apart article out today that talks about the problems with current Flash embed techniques.

You can read the article here where they misspelled my name (twice!) and in the podcast they say I’m a ‘Freelance Java developer’ of which I am neither… But I can’t be too hard on him, as he’s probably not the first person to confuse Java with Javascript.

Here’s the article, and here’s a direct link to the mp3. Fast forward to around 24:00 to hear my part.

MSN Radio is using it to embed their radio player, the Transformers movie site uses it (sweet!).

And in other yet related news, I set up a new SWFObject forum (still adding in a few things like the FAQ!) for people to use instead of the mailing list which has been growing quite a bit and is getting a bit too big to manage it well.

Update: The TED conference site uses SWFObject too (and looks like a really sweet conference this year), but of course they didn’t invite me to speak ;).

The complaint generally goes something like this:

A user has Flash Player 9 (or other version) installed on their system and everything works fine with IE6. That user then runs the IE7 update and their computer stops showing Flash content on sites like YouTube or MSN video and other Flash sites. However, if the user goes to some other sites with Flash content, the content will play just fine, even if the site requires the Flash 9 Player.

I’m not sure of the official cause for this, and am still doing some research into what causes it, but a first guess I have is that when you upgrade from IE7, the browser install is not correctly reinstalling your existing Flash Plugin, so scripts that check for the Flash Player are failing, but since the plugin file is there, if you visit a site that does not use a detection script (like SWFObject) you will see the Flash content just fine.

There may not be a solution to this for the sites using detection scripts – they rely on a series of Windows registry entries that seem to be missing after an IE7 upgrade.

For users, here is a fix that seems to work well:

1. Quit all open programs. This step is important because other programs may be using the Flash Player, and if they are, the uninstaller will fail silently.
2. Run the Adobe Flash Player Uninstaller.
3. Reinstall your Flash player.

If you are still having problems after running the uninstaller and reinstalling the plugin, please post a comment with your system setup and other relevant details. (And remember, sometimes a system restart can make a difference with problems like this, so try that first).

UPDATE (1-8-2007): Added a new step 1.

Session Slides (pdf)

Links:

http://blog.deconcept.com/swfobject/

http://www.asual.com/swfaddress/
http://exanimo.com/as2/StateManager

Further Reading:
http://blog.deconcept.com/2006/03/13/modern-approach-flash-seo/
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flash/articles/progressive_enhancement.html

Enjoy! If you were in the session, leave a comment and let me know what you thought of the presentation, and include ways I can make the next one better if you like.

This is a great example of using Flash where Flash can do something better than HTML. And doing it in a way that uses progressive enhancement so it doesn’t require Flash. It’s just that Flash makes it better.

SWFMacMouseWheel is another addon for SWFObject that listens for mouse events and passes in the mouse wheel events to your Flash movie using ExternalInterface. Very cool solution to a problem that has annoyed many Flash developers. Go check it out.

SWFMacMouseWheel

SWFAddress is a small script that sits on top of SWFObject and provides deep linking for Flash websites and applications. In other words it enables the Back, Forward and Refresh buttons of the browser and creates unique URLs with page titles that can be sent over email or IM.

SWFAddress uses the ExternalInterface functionality introduced in Flash Player 8. It has been tested on the following browsers:

* Internet Explorer 6.0 and 7.0
* Mozilla Firefox 1.5
* Safari 2.04
* Opera 9.02

It’s a great little script, and something I’ve wanted to put together for a long time. Even better: It was designed to work with SWFObject, so if you are already using SWFObject to embed your movies, it’s really really easy to just slap in some deep link and back button support.

Go check it out.

I’ve uploaded the slides here (PDF). If anyone saw it and wants to give feedback on it, I would greatly appreciate it. Feel free to post here or e-mail me directly with pointers for next time.

* But hey, it’s not really a competition, use whatever works best for you.

And to celebrate, Adobe had some big gala event in San Francisco, and made this little interactive Video timeline thing that takes about 5 minutes to load and then nearly hangs my Powerbook (way to play to the stereotype, Adobe!).

Anyway, if you snoop around in 2004 you’ll see a mention of SWFObject, which is pretty cool.

The issue is that onbeforeunload is being triggered even when a user clicks a link that contains a javascript link, which causes the cleanup routine to trigger, which makes all your swfs on the page dissapear in IE.

This has now been fixed, and 1.4.4 includes all of the ‘fixes’ that are needed to date, including the streaming media fix, and the Flash Player 9 ‘out of memory’ errors.

Download Now

* One new issue that can arise with the addition of the cleanup routines, is if you are including the swfobject.js script in your pages more than once, you will cause more ‘out of memory’ errors. If this happens, make sure you only insert the swfobject.js file in your page only one time.

This release only contains a single fix for a new issue that occurs when using Flash Player 9.

If you have multiple swf files embedded in a single HTML page, and at least one of those files uses ExternalInterface to add a callback, when you leave the page you will get an error that says “Line 56: Out of Memory”.

This only occurs in IE – no other browsers are affected, and it only happens when using Flash Player 9 whether you are using SWFObject or not.

The problem is in some new Javascript code that was inserted into Flash Player 9 to fix a bug in the IE browser. This IE bug affected swf files that connected to streaming media servers – to learn more about it you can read this blog post.

After working with Adobe, we came up with a Javascript fix for the streaming media issue and I used a variant of this code in the 1.4.2 version of SWFObject. All was fine then, until Flash Player 9 was released, and it turns out Adobe included their own Javascript (that is very similar to the fix in SWFObject) to fix the streaming media problems in IE. The only problem is that the code they used doesn’t like it when there is more than one swf embedded in a page.

So to get to the point, this new version of SWFObject just removes the ‘bad’ code that Flash Player 9 inserts into the page and instead uses the cleanup code from the previous version of SWFObject that has been working fine for Flash Player 8.

Go grab a copy now – anyone using ExternalInterface needs to be aware of this issue and should upgrade their SWFObject script immediately if you have any pages with more than one swf embedded in it.

Here’s a direct download link, or you can get it out of the SVN repository, or visit the SWFObject page and get it from there.

Embedding Flash® content and detecting Flash Player is one of the most overlooked parts of Flash development. In this session, Geoff Stearns will cover everything you need to know about Flash Player detection and embedding using SWFObject (http://blog.deconcept.com/swfobject/), including best practices, accessiblity, Express Install, Flash/Javascript communication, and search engine optimization.

Also covered in this session will be information on the recent Eolas / Active content changes to Internet Explorer and how to embed your Flash content so your users won’t have to click your content first to ’activate’ it.

I may also try to dip into some of my thoughts on Flash and search engine optimization as well.

For those of you who caught the presentation I gave with Matthew at the last NYC Flash Forward, imagine that presentation, but with more technical information and less good looking slides ;).