Comments on: Flash Player Version Detection and Upgrading http://www.iasoup.com/2009/11/08/flash-player-version-detection-and-upgrading/ User Experience, Design, Technology, Life Wed, 03 Mar 2010 21:04:03 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9 hourly 1 By: Glen Fich http://www.iasoup.com/2009/11/08/flash-player-version-detection-and-upgrading/comment-page-1/#comment-329 Glen Fich Wed, 03 Mar 2010 21:04:03 +0000 http://www.iasoup.com/?p=69#comment-329 Hi Christian. By far the best way I have found is to use SWF object which is hosted by google code here: http://code.google.com/p/swfobject/. Reasons are good are as follows: * Is more optimized and flexible than any other Flash Player embed method around * Offers one solution for everybody: It shouldn't matter if you are an HTML, Flash, or JavaScript developer * Not locked into vendor specific markup and promotes the use of web standards and alternative content * Uses unobtrusive JavaScript and JavaScript best practices - if JS is off it fails politely * Is easy to use On top of that I would recommend calling the script from Google code directly - if your visitors have loaded and cached it from another site they don't have to go through loading it up again (same goes for JQuery if you use that) You can do this either by calling the URL's directly or by using Google's AJAX API (http://code.google.com/apis/ajax/documentation/) Example of using Google AJAX API with both JQuery and SWFObject can be found on my portfolio site: www.creative-ux.com (SWFObject used on 'Promos & Ads' under the 'Brand' section. Hope that helps. For flash its much more standards friendly and offers greater accessibility - which matters to UX guys like you and I ;-) Hi Christian. By far the best way I have found is to use SWF object which is hosted by google code here: http://code.google.com/p/swfobject/. Reasons are good are as follows:
* Is more optimized and flexible than any other Flash Player embed method around
* Offers one solution for everybody: It shouldn’t matter if you are an HTML, Flash, or JavaScript developer
* Not locked into vendor specific markup and promotes the use of web standards and alternative content
* Uses unobtrusive JavaScript and JavaScript best practices – if JS is off it fails politely
* Is easy to use
On top of that I would recommend calling the script from Google code directly – if your visitors have loaded and cached it from another site they don’t have to go through loading it up again (same goes for JQuery if you use that)
You can do this either by calling the URL’s directly or by using Google’s AJAX API (http://code.google.com/apis/ajax/documentation/)

Example of using Google AJAX API with both JQuery and SWFObject can be found on my portfolio site: http://www.creative-ux.com (SWFObject used on ‘Promos & Ads’ under the ‘Brand’ section.

Hope that helps. For flash its much more standards friendly and offers greater accessibility – which matters to UX guys like you and I ;-)

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