SlideShowPro News

04.21.06 | IE update and SlideShowPro

In case you didn't know, there's a security update for Windows XP / IE 6 currently making its way onto desktops the world over that changes the way Internet Explorer renders Flash content (and any content embedded using the <object> for that matter). Instead of auto-playing the Flash movie, users are now required to click on the SWF to grant "permission" for it to load. This appears in IE as a gray border surrounding the SWF, plus a tooltip.

This affects any SWF embedded using the default publish templates in Flash MX 2004 and Flash 8. And yes, this obviously includes any SWF that contains SlideShowPro.

So is there a way to get around this update? There is -- embedding the SWF using JavaScript.

Adobe has provided some updated publishing templates (read more about my thoughts on these here at my blog), but they're unnecessarily cumbersome. The best JavaScript embedding solution I've used is the third-party FlashObject. It not only gets your SWF around this new IE issue, but is a good solution for player detection, providing alternate (non-Flash) content, and quickly embedding your SWFs in HTML with very little fuss.