Browser never stops loading?

Flash IE load problem

[Chrisssy]

Hi,
I'm a total newbie here so please be kind...:)I know you've probably dealt with this several times but I couldn't find it in the topics list.
I've loaded a page with flash and have encountered the IE problem "click to activate". I did a little research and found a JavaScript that seemed to handle the issue but raised another issue of the browser never stops loading! I tried another script that supposedly convert the flash object to javascript but that didn't work. Can anyone point me in the direction of a previous thread on this or I'd love to hear from you if you have a solution.
Thanks heaps
Chrisssy

[mediafrenzymusic]

Hi Chrissy,

I have the same problem and I am still looking for an answer. I'll let you know if i find one!

[rocknbil]

Welcome aboard mediafrenzymusic! I guess we missed Chrisssy, maybe she'll get this in auto notification.

I've loaded a page with flash and have encountered the IE problem "click to activate".

This has to do with a law suit Macromedia placed against MS for distribution of their products within the browser (EXTREMELY paraphrased, but something a lot like that.) Use the open source library SWFObject, it gets rid of this and provides a much better way of presenting Flash than either the antiquated embed-in-object or Satay methods. It will get rid of the line.

Short story, you put your "alternate" content in a div on the page. If Javascript is disabled or Flash is inoperable, the alternate content displays, which is good (search engines.) If JS and Flash are good to go, it writes the flash object to that div. Accessible and extensible, it works great (and is easy to implement.)

. . . but raised another issue of the browser never stops loading!

This will be one of two things. If the path to the Flash is incorrect, you won't get a "red x" like a picture. It won't time out. It will just keep waiting for the object to load.

The other is if the Flash object itself is waiting on data and the path to that data within Flash is incorrect, it will also just hang. These are the two I encounter every time I typo. :-) An example is loading a playlist from an XML file.

A good habit to form: always use full relative paths to your objects. This means you can place the file in **any** directory on your site. For example, if you have flash at

images/flash/my.swf

and you have three pages that reference it, one at root, one in products, and one in products/widgets

products.html
products/some-product.html
products/widgets/my-widget.html

Developers tend to overthink this, or work on their local computer and stick with it, and use this syntax for the three pages:

src="images/flash/my.swf" (products.html)
src="../images/flash/my.swf" (some-product.html)
src="../../images/flash/my.swf" (my-widget.html)

All three pages can access this object by beginning with the forward slash. This means "no matter where this page is, start looking for this object at root:"

src="/images/flash/my.swf"

The down side is when you work on pages locally, Windows and Mac don't know what to do with the beginning slash. This is most likely why the dot-syntax is used and left in pages.

Last note, be sure to do the same thing in any Javascript referencing the flash:

var logo = new SWFObject('\/images\/flash\/my.swf', 'logo-id', '97', '165', '6', '#000000');