February 2007
Feb 21, 2007
Sweat the details.
Argh.
After finding out about Microsoft’s modifications to ActiveX that created a user-expectation defying halo around Flash content, I tried implementing Adobe’s fix on this site. And I’m not going to lie, I struggled with the details.
It introduces four new failure points for embedding SWF files within HTML; an external javascript file, two script tags in the header of the HTML, and one javascript function within the body of the HTML. The one that frustrated me the most is the javascript function in the body. It’s relatively simple. It looks for browser javascript support and, upon finding it, embeds and activates the SWF. The killer is in the lines:
’src’, ‘myMovieName’,
‘movie’, ‘myMovieName’ ,
These lines correspond to these lines in the original method to embed a SWF:
<embed src=”myMoveName.swf” …
<param name=”movie” value=”myMovieName.swf” />
Notice the change? I didn’t either, but look closely. In the javascript function, the embedded SWF cannot have the extension ‘.swf’ but in the original method the extension ‘.swf’ must be present. How many designers updating pages outside of Dreamweaver were tripped up by that little coding eccentricity? I know I’m not the only one with my hand up.
Feb 14, 2007
Click To Activate And Use This Control
Wow. This sucks rocks.
In an effort to comply with patent litigation, Microsoft has modified ActiveX to require that a user click within the bounding box of embedded content to interact with it. The result is that Flash SWFs, as well as java applets, embedded within HTML appear to have a chunky border when the user rolls over the content. While the message “Click To Activate And Use This Control” appears in one of those yellow “cryptic messages of mystery”, this whole situation is a disaster for usability. Users have become rather sophisticated at identifying interactive content before their mouse does. A highlighted area is a clickable area that changes the state of the page. This Microsoft modification violates that expectation as when the user clicks the highlighted area, nothing happens. From a surfer’s point of view, the page is broken and leads to assumptions about the seriousness of the people behind the page. (I’m not sure if this says more for the skill of browsers or a lack of creativity from designers. That’s a loaded topic for a later date, no doubt.)
Adobe has created a fix in the form of an extension. It may be downloaded here. I saw a mumbling on FlashCoders that this fix could break flash to javascript communication. That does not surprise me. As Flash gets more complex, fundamental changes in specifications like Microsoft’s send us all back 5 years when it was commonplace to check for five to ten browsers, in multiple versions, that execute seventeen versions of the same code. If you are not working towards standards compliance, then consider every “Click To Activate And Use This Control” a personal censure from me.
Huh. In re-reading this, I guess I am now one of those people.
Update: Apparently I am really late to the party. In my defense, I am a full-time Firefox user and a recreational Safari user. Internet Explorer has always been a bit of a pariah on my dock.
