Activating an ActiveX Control's Interface through Javascript
Removing the Marching Ants around SWF Files
06/19/2006
As a result of the jury decision in Microsoft's Eolas patent lawsuit, Microsoft created an Internet Explorer update that would force users to activate media items coded with "embed", "applet" or "object" tags. The result of this decision is that while movies may play and function correctly in Firefox, Safari and other browsers, users must click Flash media to "activate" it and accept ActiveX alerts on pages containing Quicktime media.
A solution to this obstacle has been dutifully created and promoted by Geoff Stearns. His "SWFObject" (grab it here) is a simple Javascript which enables developers to embed Flash files into sites without using "embed", "applet" or "object".
For instance, we used to have our home page navigation coded like this:
With Mr. Stearns' SWFObject, the syntax is shorter and effective. In the head, we include his Javascript file:
And in the body, we replace the object and embed tags with this:
The SWFObject allows for you to add all the parameters of Adobe's default export using the addParam function.
To make things better, you can still pass variables to and from the Flash from PHP by adding the FLASHVARS variable with Stearns' addParam function.
For instance, our interior navigation, with the PHP/Smarty variables, looks like this:
The resourceful Stearns' provides the identical solution for embedding Quicktime movies to eradicate Microsoft's ActiveX alert window.
Include his QTObject Javascript file in the head of your page:
And modify the code for your Quicktime video to use his format:
Incorporating the add.Param function for Quicktime parameters, you can easily add poster movies and controller options the same way you would in Flash:
Helpful Links:
SWFObject Download (zip)
QTObject Download (zip)
SWFObject Documentation
QTObject Documentation
