Re: FLASH: Flash Detection

[Gregg Caines]

I hadn't heard this one before, so I've got to respond. :)


In my tests (which are admittedly not exhaustive) I've only seen IE

do this.  Netscape shows the plug-in/"puzzle-piece" icon until the 

page refreshes and goes on to the HTML-only page.  If you're 

smarter than me, you won't use a 100% X 100% -sized sniffer and 

it will go unnoticed. :)


Obviously IE is a pretty popular browser, but I'm pretty sure it has

come pre-installed with the Flash plug-in since IE 3 (my memory 

could be wrong here, of course).  So it seems that, that dialog would

only occur on machines where the plug-in has been intentionally 

removed.


In that remote case, whichever choice the user makes on the dialog 

(yes, no, or close-the-window-I'm-scared) should still send them to 

the HTML-only page (since the refresh timer marches on regardless).


If you're finding otherwise though, I'd be grateful to know about it...

we've been using this scheme for a few months now with no reported 

problems, but I never know about the unreported ones!  Our logs 

seem to indicate that the only people that can't make it through to

some content are the search engines...which is a problem, though not 

one with our detection scheme. :)


---------------------------------------------------

Gregg Caines

n e o m e t r i x  systems inc.

http://www.neometrixsystems.com

gcainesneometrixsystems [dot] com

> 

> [Kristopher responds:]

> This is a good approach if you KNOW that the user will have SOME version

> of the Flash plug-in installed and you just need to detect whether it is

> the right version or not.

> 

> BUT, the reason I don't use this approach is that when there is NO

> version of the Flash plug-in installed some browsers pop up a very

> user-un-friendly dialog as soon as you hit a page with Flash content

> saying something to the effect of "This page contains content of MIME

> type 'animation/x-flash'. Would you like to search for an appropriate

> plug-in? NO YES"




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