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Flash ActiveX bug: object 404

When Markus Mielke wrote that they Improved <object> fallback I was hoping that they also fixed one very annoying bug related to object element.

Imagine this simple code, used in this example:

<object data="assets/countdown_greatbritain.swf"
	type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
	width="269" height="34">
<param name="quality" value="high" />
<param name="wmode" value="transparent" />
<param name="pluginurl" value="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" />
This is where the Flash file would load, but it is intentionally missing.
</object>

If the file is not found at that URL, browser will receive 404 — file not found error. It should simply continue with page execution.
Internet Explorer, both 6 and 7, will however continue to “download” this file forever and thus never execute any window.onload code.

I long thought that this is bug in IE’s implementation of object, which was known to be buggy. Since this behavior repeated I started writing this post about IE bug, only to realize that all works as expected when instead of Flash I load QuickTime movie. Or image. Or Word document. Or PDF. Anything except Flash.

This is actually bug in Macromedia’s Adobe’s ActiveX plugin. Adobe, please fix this thing, it’s extremely annoying.

tags: Web dev
Comments: 1

Posted 3 years, 9 months agopermanent link

trackback URL: http://aplus.rs/web-dev/flash-activex-bug-object-404/trackback/

Voices from the crowd, one so far

I had this problem with my website and found a graceful way around it. By using the SwfObject http://blog.deconcept.com/swfobject/ you can set the minimum version for the Flash Player, before the object tag is constructed. If you set the minimum version to 9 it all works well. If you have the proper Flash Player it handles the 404 and if not you can display a message to upgrade.

by Mark
2 months after the post

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