ramblings
It’s hard to believe that I’ve run learnswfobject.com for nearly ten years. It’s easy to overlook now, but back when Flash was booming, before iOS and Android changed everything, SWFObject was a very important piece of web technology. According to BuiltWith.com, SWFObject’s usage peaked
web design and development
This is a journey into the madness of Internet Explorer. Yes, there is a happy ending. Jump to the end of the post if you just want the solution and don’t care about how we got there. The Scenario You want to embed a Flash SWF into your HTML
How-to
I’ve been reviewing bug submissions for the SWFObject project and was reminded of a big problem with SWFObject 2.2: the JavaScript technique it uses for detecting Internet Explorer does not work in Internet Explorer 9. SWFObject 2.2 currently uses an IE detection technique proposed by Andrea Giammarchi
Adobe Flash
Update, Dec. 2018: LearnSWFObject.com has been retired. It had a successful run, but with the demise of Adobe Flash, was no longer relevant. The domain learnswfobject.com is now owned by a squatter, don’t bother visiting. The site contents are preserved on GitHub, available at https://pipwerks.github.
Blackboard v Desire2Learn
Update: In 2013, four years after I posted this blog entry, Eolas lost their court case and subsequent appeals. Eolas Technologies is a company that manages licensing for patents. Eolas seeks to return value to its shareholders by commercializing these technologies through strategic alliances, licensing and spin offs. (source) The
Project Updates
A year ago this week, I launched the not-for-profit and ad-free pipwerks E-Learning Development Forum. It was mostly intended to be a way for me to answer questions about some of my projects, such as the SCORM API wrapper, SCORM ActionScript classes, and my many Captivate hacks. The forum wasn’
JavaScript
Update March 2011: PDFObject source code has been updated and moved to GitHub. I recently worked on an e-learning course that required embedding some PDFs into an HTML file. PDF embedding piqued my curiosity, and has become something of a pet project. It sounds simpler than it is. No, scratch
Adobe Flash
Geoff Stearns and Bobby van der Sluis have finalized SWFObject 2.0. It is no longer beta, and SWFObject 1.5 is now considered deprecated. SWFObject 2.0’s home is located at Google Code, which includes full documentation and downloads. I believe support will be handled by the SWFObject