Swfobject and lightbox conflict
On our new site for 2k we discovered a super error message on IE: “Internet Explorer cannot open the Internet site *** Operation aborted.” Google turned out this solution. Turns out it was a swfobject conflict with lightbox. Also, god I hate IE.
I never would have guessed that would be the problem. The primary reason for using swf object is for IE compatibility. If they have such a hard time keeping up with the Internet, why don’t they just license webkit?
Comment by Mark — April 26, 2008 @ 2:07 pm
Hey guys,
Glad to hear that the post helped :) Mark, I’d argue that the main reason for using SWFObject is to embed SWF files in a standards-compliant manner that lends itself to the implementation of progressive enhancement :)
Comment by Aral Balkan — April 27, 2008 @ 3:33 am
I would have to agree with Alan. Standards compliant code is good. Are you sure it was a conflict with lightbox. Reading further is seemed it like it was a runtime delay issue.
Comment by Jordan — April 27, 2008 @ 1:57 pm
@Aral and @Jordan, the object element is an official W3C recommendation that has progressive enhancement built right in. Flash Satay was my method of choice for years, until MS lost their lawsuit with Eolas. It’s perfectly standards compliant, downgrades gracefully when the desired plug-in isn’t available, and requires no javascript. IE is the reason for confusing bits of this implementation, and IE is the reason it is no longer a viable solution (click to activate).
Comment by Mark — April 28, 2008 @ 9:02 am
Yes Flash Satay is definitely the way to go if you can. With SwfObject though it lends itself to allowing you to detect the player version so you can handle an upgrade if needed. That is something the Satay method doesn’t do all that well.
So did do you approach the version detection when you were using the Satay method?
Comment by Jordan — April 28, 2008 @ 2:09 pm
Quick update, the whole defer thing ended up causing some probs in IE 7. The site ended up not needing lightbox in the end, so I took all of this at. So it’s still sort of a mystery, but something to be solved later.
Comment by Robert — May 7, 2008 @ 12:30 pm