Monthly Archives: December 2006

I’m on the BBC!

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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

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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 ;).

Corrupt Flash Player install after IE 7 upgrade

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I’ve been seeing a few mails about this since the Internet Explorer update was released, so I wanted to post some info about it to maybe help the people having issues.

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.

Flash on the Beach session notes

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Just a quick post to provide my session slides and links:

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.

Off to Flash on the Beach

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I’m heading to London tonight (posting this from our plane on the runway… delays suck) for Flash on the Beach.

I’ll be hanging out around London Saturday and Sunday, and heading to Brighton Sunday evening, so if you are in the area be sure to say hi.

UPDATE: Well, after a smooth flight, we landed at Gatwick, waited a bit to get through customs, and then found out Brandie’s new suitcase was missing… all that was left near mine was another bag that was the exact same color and model as hers, but with someone else’s nametag on it.
So we notified the airline, and they will hopefully deliver it when this other person realizes they took the wrong bag.

So then we headed up to London for the night (before heading down to brighton Sunday evening). Well, the first thing I tried to do out of the tube station was get some cash from the cashpoint machine. I put my card in, selected the amount, and when the machine tried to spit my card back out, it got stuck somehow just out of reach. It tried a couple of times to spit it out, but eventually gave up and confiscated my card! The lady in the bank wasn’t helpful at all, and was just plain rude when I told her the machine ate my card.

So, right now the score is UK: 2, me: 0.

On the up side, the hotel we picked in London is very nice, and in a prime location to enjoy a bit of pre-conference shopping and sight seeing, and the airline website says they found our bag and it’s out for delivery… so things should be better from here on out :)

UPDATE (12-3-2006): Well, more than 30 hours after we arrived in London, our lost bag showed up. We got into Brighton this evening around 6pm, and met up with all the other nerds at the hotel bar and headed over to Aral’s house for a little pre-conference party. And HOLY CRAP he has a nice place. He was just moving in so the furniture was very sparse, but the apartment itself was fantastic.