In Accessibility ,Browsers ,Flash ,Flex / Tags: /
I have heard this question many times before. There is a misconception that if you create Flash content it will work exactly the same as long as the user has the correct version of the plugin. This is not actually entirely true. Bobby van der Sluis has spent a lot of time researching the different techniques that are commonly used and the effects they can have on the Flash movie. Bobby has written a great article – Flash Embedding Cage Match - on A List Apart. In this article he reviews the various methods that are available, gives a bit of history and explains what the best case would be.
Bobby has put together a test case and made public the results. Just a quick glance at the page will give an indication of the amount of time he has spent working on it. What a great job – it is really appreciated.
Bobby has joined forces with Geoff Stearns to develop SWFfix with the goal to create the ultimate JavaScript library for embedding Flash content. I wish them luck and am looking forward to using SWFfix in the future.
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The Player renders the same. The browser’s behavior might be different (WMODE, network requests, JavaScript communication, etc).
Browser dependencies are always an issue. The core code for Adobe Flash Player has very few differences across environments.
jd/adobe
No solaris support makes flash 8 un-usable. When will Adobe really make this application run on all OSs?? Also, on windows, certain features don’t work on particular browsers.
Ports to Solaris were dropped a few years ago, when the platform itself dropped even further:
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/alternates
We put work into smoothing over the media & interactivity differences among the operating systems people actually use, but there will always be some operating systems whose media services and/or user base don’t support such engineering.
I’m not sure whether you read my previous, about “certain features” usually referring to browser-dependent features…? It’s difficult for me to reply, considering.
jd/adobe
(sorry about the bad “name” field in there… Firefox likes to autofill, and sometimes it chooses weird things….
jd/adobe
i didn’t know that geoff stearns and bobby van der sluis had started working on something together! that’s excellent news.