Flash
Detection Scripts
written by
kirupa
chinnathambi
A common usability mistake people make
is that they assume that everyone has the latest version of
the Macromedia Flash Player installed. While 90% of people
do use have the Flash plug-in installed, not everyone has
the Flash 6 Player or even the Flash 5 Player installed on
their computers. Should a user visit your site using an
older, incompatible version of the Flash player, you could
end up inconveniencing the viewer to the point that he/she
never returns to your site again! Not all users use Internet
Explorer with the cool Install On Demand feature that
automatically downloads the plug-in if the user does not
have the plug in installed. To
solve all your woes mysterious, holy people have created
something called a detection script. A detection script
basically checks your computer for the Flash plug-in. Should
a plug-in be found, it performs an action such as
transporting you to a page containing Flash content. If a
plug-in cannot be found, the script might take you to
another non-Flash page requesting you to download the Flash
plug-in from another Web site. I
have provided several variations of the Flash Detection
script for you to use on your own site. To use these
scripts, simply copy and paste the code into an HTML
document. Usually the HTML document will be the first page
that leads up to some Flash content such as an index.htm or
flashdetect.htm page.
Flash Detect: Flash Page or
No-Flash Page
The most common type of Flash
detection script is the script that checks to see if you
have the Flash plug-in installed. Depending on what the
script finds you will either see a Flash page or a non-Flash
page. The non-Flash page will be displayed if you do not
have the Flash plug-in installed. The Flash page, of course,
will display if you have the Flash plug-in installed.
Here's the code:
[ script for detecting the flash
plug-in and taking you to a flash/noflash page ]
To make the code work on your site, look
in the code you pasted and replace
http://www.kirupa.com
with the page containing the Flash content. Replace
http://www.kirupa.com/noflash.htm
with the page that does not contain Flash content.
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NOTE |
| For
the above code,
you
must ensure that the URL you enter is the full
path instead of a relative URL. Instead of
simply entering indexflash.htm, enter
http://www.kirupa.com/indexflash.htm.
Entering a relative URL without the http header
will cause your script to fail. |
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Flash Detect: Image or
Animation
In this script, the
HTML page will check to see if the user has Flash. If the
user has Flash, the animation contained on THE SAME page
will be displayed. If the user does not have Flash, a
graphical representation of the animation you provide will
be displayed.
Here's the code:
[ script for detecting the flash
plug-in and displaying swf or image ]
You will need to make some minor
modifications to the above script for it to work properly
for your site. Replace all instances of script.swf
with the path to your Flash movie. Likewise, replace all
instances of script.gif with the page to the image
that will be displayed if the user does not have Flash
installed. The above pieces of
code should help you in creating your own Flash Detection
script. There is no way for you to cover 100% of all users.
There will always be some user on a new, arcane browser that
does not work with the re-direction. With these scripts, I
am confident that you will target a majority of users on
various platform/browser configurations!
For more control over how your Flash
movies are detected, I recommend you try the Macromedia
Flash Deployment Kit from the following URL:
http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/download/deployment_kit/
Just a final word before we wrap up. If you have a question and/or want to be part of a friendly, collaborative community of over 220k other developers like yourself, post on the forums for a quick response!
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