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• Problem with SWFObject 2.1 in IE7 / Vista

  I have a site where I’m using the SWFObject javascript library to handle Flash detection and embedding of flash movies. I noticed a javascript error in IE7 that was preventing the alternate content being replaced with the flash movie – the end result was a banner showing ‘get a new version of flash’ etc.

  After a little investigation the problem appears to only affect the minified version of the library. I haven’t found the exact issue, but it looks like a problem with the obfuscation applied in publishing the minified js file.

  I have a custom endpoint handling minification and caching of the javascript anyhow, so after switching to the source version of the library and handling minification myself, all is good in IE7.

  Posted:

  March 18, 2009 @ 12:03

  Categories:

  Development

  Tags:

  flash, IE7

  Comments:

  2 comments so far

• Webtrends tracking from Flash

  I’ve been working on a Flash widget, and the majority of the sites it will be hosted on use WebTrends for analytics. I recently had to look into capturing certain interaction events from the Flash movie and passing them through to WebTrends for reporting.

  Flash events are tracked as fake page impressions in WebTrends based on unique URLs that you define. The flash movie doesn’t talk to WebTrends directly – it calls through to javascript on the host page which logs the event via standard WebTrends javascript.

  In my case I’m working on a widget that could be hosted on a variety of pages that may or may not implement WebTrends. The required behaviour is for tracking to automatically kick in if the host page implements WebTrends, but gracefully degrade if not. I have a javascript file that handles interaction with the flash movie, so I can guarantee certain js functions exist on the host page.

  The solution looks like so…

  Add an ActionScript class to pass events through to host page

  package {

      import flash.external.ExternalInterface;

      public class Analytics {

          public static const WIDGET_LOADED:String = "/Video/Widget/WidgetLoaded";

          public static const PLAYER_LAUNCHED:String = "/Video/Widget/PlayerLaunched";

          public function Analytics(): void {

          }

          public static function captureEvent(eventType:String) {

              if (ExternalInterface.available) {

                  ExternalInterface.call("mycompany.video.captureAnalyticsEvent",  eventType);

              }

          }

      }

  }

  An example of passing an event to this class…

  Analytics.captureEvent(Analytics.WIDGET_LOADED);

  Implement javascript functions on the host page

  /* set up namespace for new functions */

  if (window["mycompany"] == null) {

      window["mycompany"] = {};

  }

  mycompany.video = {

      webtrendsTrackingFunction: {},

      captureAnalyticsEvent: function(eventType) {

          var uriParam = 'DCS.dcsuri';

          if (typeof (this.webtrendsTrackingFunction) == 'function') {

              // if user has nominated a specific tracking function

              this.webtrendsTrackingFunction(uriParam, eventType);

          } else if (window["dcsMultiTrack"] != null) {

              // if dcsMultiTrack already implemented on page

              window.dcsMultiTrack(uriParam, eventType);

          } else if (window["dcsTag"] != null) {

              // otherwise if webtrends implemented on page, use default implementation

              mycompany.video.analytics.dcsMultiTrack(uriParam, eventType);

          }

      }

  }

  mycompany.video.analytics = {

      dcsMultiTrack: function() {

          for (var i = 0; i < arguments.length; i++) {

              if (arguments[i].indexOf('WT.') == 0) {

                  WT[arguments[i].substring(3)] = arguments[i + 1]; i++;

              }

              if (arguments[i].indexOf('DCS.') == 0) {

                  DCS[arguments[i].substring(4)] = arguments[i + 1]; i++;

              }

              if (arguments[i].indexOf('DCSext.') == 0) {

                  DCSext[arguments[i].substring(7)] = arguments[i + 1]; i++;

              }

          }

          var dCurrent = new Date();

          DCS.dcsdat = dCurrent.getTime();

          dcsTag();

      }

  }

  The key points above the script above…

  • To report events from Flash, WebTrends require an additional function on the host page that they provide – dcsMultiTrack
  • If the host page has implemented dcsMultiTrack already, the existing function will be used
  • If the host page implements standard WT js but not the additional function, a fresh implementation of the dcsMultiTrack function will be used
  • If WebTrends javascript has not been implemented on the host page, nothing bad happens

  In addition, we have a standard function that the flash movie will always call, so if we need to extend functionality to cater for different analytics systems etc, then we have a single place to implement this.

  This is probably the least sexy post I’ve ever written, but it seemed worthwhile to document this. I’ll follow up with some sexified content sometime soon.

  Posted:

  February 27, 2009 @ 12:07

  Categories:

  Development

  Tags:

  analytics, flash, javascript, webtrends

  Comments:

  2 comments so far

• Testing IE rendering

  I have to admit until recently I’ve been using virtual machines for testing rendering in different versions of IE – just came across IETester which lets you open new tabs running the rendering engine from different versions. You probably know all about this already, but it was new to me. Last time I looked into this it was still a major headache.

  I’d really recommend taking a look if you’re doing any client-side dev work.

  Update: There isn’t a huge amount of information about exactly how this is implemented and whether you can solely rely on this for testing rendering + javascript of a major application. The closest I could find was this from the author on a forum… ‘I am hooking win32 functions to override standard calls and launch custom versions of IE instead of standard version.’ Everything I’ve tried so far has been accurate, but I think better documentation would really help adoption.

  There may be info I haven’t found in the forums.

  Posted:

  February 26, 2009 @ 13:22

  Categories:

  Development

  Tags:

  rendering, x-browser

  Comments:

  2 comments so far

• Using ExternalInterface to call Javascript from Actionscript – ‘null’ is null or not an object in IE

  If you are using ExternalInterface in Actionscript 3 to call through to a javascript function, the original object tag that instantiated the flash runtime needs to have an explicit id attribute. Otherwise you’ll get the above error when running the movie in Internet Explorer.

  Posted:

  February 26, 2009 @ 11:00

  Categories:

  Development

  Tags:

  flash, javascript

  Comments:

  8 comments so far

• Added object tag to page via DOM methods – IE chaos

  I’ve been working on a widget project that involves Flash and Javascript, and came across some very strange behaviour in IE6 / 7. The object tag to render the flash movie is dynamically added to the page at runtime using standard DOM methods – document.createElement, setAttribute, appendChild etc. Life was wonderful until I opened Internet Explorer, which hangs with what looks like a request for a file with no timeout (progress bar moving very slowly but never completing). This is identical behaviour to how IE behaves when the location of the SWF is invalid.

  The markup

  The markup I was generating was based on Flash Satay. Including this as static markup in a page works fine. Simple example below…

  <object type='application/x-shockwave-flash' data='test.swf' width='420' height='155'>

      <param name='movie' value='test.swf' />

  </object>

  DOM approach that chokes IE

  The following approach causes IE to choke…

  <script type="text/javascript">

      var object = document.createElement('object');

      object.setAttribute('type', 'application/x-shockwave-flash');

      object.setAttribute('data', 'test.swf');

      object.setAttribute('width', '100');

      object.setAttribute('height', '100');

      var param = document.createElement('param');

      param.setAttribute('name', 'movie');

      param.setAttribute('value', 'test.swf');

      object.appendChild(param);

      document.body.appendChild(object);

  </script>

  The solution / workaround

  For some reason if the object tag + params are parsed at the same time everything works fine, so the solution involves using the alternate approach to manipulating the DOM – innerHTML. This wouldn’t have been my first choice given the situation, but it seems to be the only way to get this working. A version that works in IE…

  <script type="text/javascript">

      var fragment =

          "<object type='application/x-shockwave-flash' data='test.swf' width='100' height='100'>" +

              "<param name='movie' value='test.swf' />" +

          "</object>";

      var container = document.createElement('div');

      container.innerHTML = fragment;

      document.body.appendChild(container);

  </script>

  This achieves the same end result – a DOM element node that can be inserted anyway you wish, but avoid the problem in IE.

  Posted:

  February 26, 2009 @ 10:51

  Categories:

  Development

  Tags:

  dom, flash, IE, javascript, x-browser

  Comments:

  2 comments so far

• Mouthful of Flies – please vote

  If you can spare a minute, please go and vote for Mouthful of Flies to play at Bloodstock. Even if you’re not into metal, then do it to make me happy.

  Posted:

  February 16, 2009 @ 11:13

  Categories:

  Personal

  Tags:

  events, gigs, london, metal

  Comments:

  No comments so far

• Upcoming web development events in London (2009)

  I thought I’d mention a couple of interesting events that have now opened for registration in London. I’ll be going along to both, so give me a shout if you’re planning to attend.

  The first is a workshop with Eric Meyer – The Exciting Future of CSS and XHTML. I went to one of his workshops a few years back, and would really recommend this if you’re interested in front-end web technologies.

  The second is @media 2009, the main web standards conference in London. I missed last year, so curious to see what people have to say.

  Posted:

  February 10, 2009 @ 19:47

  Categories:

  Development

  Tags:

  events, london

  Comments:

  No comments so far

• FeedDemon on iPhone

  I’ve used FeedDemon as an RSS reader for a number of years, and just had a quick look into how easy it is to view your subscriptions on an iPhone. I’m pretty impressed with the experience.

  There is no ‘native’ iPhone application that I could find, but a mobile interface that is very impressive. Browse to m.newsgator.com on your phone, bookmark and add to your home page. Easy way to stay in touch which catching the bus to work etc.

  Posted:

  February 10, 2009 @ 13:44

  Categories:

  Personal

  Tags:

  iphone, rss

  Comments:

  No comments so far

• XBox Live Avatar

  

  Posted:

  December 1, 2008 @ 10:56

  Categories:

  Personal

  Tags:

  xbox avatar

  Comments:

  No comments so far

• ASP.NET MVC – the incoming request does not match any route

  I spent way too long investigating a problem where a local site built with ASP.NET MVC beta was working perfectly (well… ish), but after deploying the site to a web server running IIS6 I was getting a couple of weird symptoms.

  The first was that navigating the the root of the site was throwing an exception – ‘The incoming request does not match any route’. Any other type of request was returning a 404 error (for example navigating to /Accounts).

  The problem turned out to be that I was packaging up the files to deploy via msbuild, and I’d failed to include global.asax. This meant the file wasn’t deployed, therefore no routes were set up in the route table.

  Based on this , the a request to the root of the site correctly failed to map to any valid route, and no other requests were getting mapped to the Controller classes / action methods, so were returning a 404.

  Relevant thread on Stackoverflow…

  Posted:

  November 13, 2008 @ 10:23

  Categories:

  Development

  Tags:

  asp.net mvc deployment packaging automation

  Comments:

  No comments so far