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.