Category Archives: swfobject

Speaking at Flashbelt

Posted on by

While I was at Flash on the Beach back in December, I met Dave and didn’t even realize he was the dave from Pilotvibe and the organizer of Flashbelt. Schematic sent a few people up there last year to give presentations, and they all said it was fantastic, so I was very excited when Dave invited me to speak at this year’s conference.

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!

SWFObject 1.5 released

Posted on by

I’m pleased to announce the next semi-major release of SWFObject (Direct download link). This version has been in development for quite a while, but only because I haven’t been able to find time to update the documentation.

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!

Announcing the SWFFix project

Posted on by

SWFFix is a new joint project from myself and Bobby van der Sluis. The project’s goal is to replace SWFObject and UFO with a single method that is (hopefully) more standards compliant and doesn’t rely entirely on Javascript.

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.

I’m on the BBC!

Posted on by

After my session at Flash on the Beach I was interviewed by a BBC reporter. I ended up getting into the article and on the air (or was it just the podcast? who knows).

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.

Recent SWFObject sightings

Posted on by

Lately I’ve been seeing SWFObject pop up all over the place. Most notably in Digg.com’s new redesign for their embedded video player. Makes sense since YouTube has been using it to embed their videos for months now, and Digg labs has been using it for a while to embed their cool charts and graphs and things.

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 ;).