karohemd: by LJ user gothindulgence (Blofeld)
[personal profile] karohemd
With NoScript active, only 1 out of 20 websites running Flash stuff tell me I need to allow Javascript, all the others tell me to update my Flash player. Why is that?

Date: 15/9/09 10:28 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] christhegoth.livejournal.com
Because they're st00pid. In reality the older flash versions may not support the newer flash stuff made with the latest software. But I prefer to call them st00pid :)

Heh

Date: 15/9/09 10:50 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] karohemd.livejournal.com
I even get it when I have the latest version so most don't write their stuff properly?

Re: Heh

Date: 15/9/09 11:18 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kizzie.livejournal.com
Maybe it's blocked in a different way? I notice that it changes at times too

Re: Heh

Date: 15/9/09 11:22 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] karohemd.livejournal.com
All you need to do to make it work is allow javascript on the page.
My question is why does it tell me the issue is with the Flash player, not with javascript? Very few websites do it.

Re: Heh

Date: 16/9/09 09:12 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kizzie.livejournal.com
I usually click on the flash box thing to make it work rather than enabling all the script. Maybe the flash player uses java script to work out what version you have? Sound sunlikely though...

Re: Heh

Date: 16/9/09 09:33 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] karohemd.livejournal.com
That's not the point of my question.

Re: Heh

Date: 16/9/09 08:57 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] christhegoth.livejournal.com
They write a lazy message, not 'Oi, turn your flash on ya muppet.'

Date: 15/9/09 11:33 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] duncanneko.livejournal.com
Due to the dodgy patent on "automatically activating plugins" (this sort of mess), there's a JavaScript hack to activate Flash in many pages. Thus if there's no javascript, Flash often falls over.

As it's generally more likely that someone's got old Flash than JavaScript blocked, I suspect most pages tend to default to assuming the former, even if they could test for both if they wanted to.

Date: 16/9/09 12:10 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] karohemd.livejournal.com
So basically it's laziness on the author's part, just as I thought.

Date: 16/9/09 06:27 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] bateleur.livejournal.com
I suspect most pages tend to default to assuming the former

Close, but not quite.

The reality is that the vast majority of sites (I'd guess well over 99%) which contain Flash content are made by designers who are nowhere near competent to write their own embedding code. So they do one of two things:

1) Do a websearch for a solution.
2) Use a solution autogenerated by their Flash authoring software.

Both of these approaches have a tendency to generate out-of-date embedding code. The former because most pages describing how to do it date from when it used to be harder. The latter because keeping Adobe Creative Suite products up to date is fairly expensive.

As you might hope, the current version of Flash CS4 produces code which checks for Javascript, uses it if present but falls back to a less robust solution if not. This will never give the wrong error message.

Some surprising sites get things wrong, though. I'm particularly impressed by FaceBook's embedded videos, which sometimes tell me to upgrade Flash even though I'm running an up-to-date version and JavaScript!

Date: 16/9/09 09:47 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] karohemd.livejournal.com
*nods* Cheers!

Date: 16/9/09 09:12 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] feanelwa.livejournal.com
They cannot imagine why anybody could possibly not want obscenely bad design to shout and flicker across the room at everybody with no warning, or be less than overjoyed to have porn adverts thrown at them whenever they visit otherwise perfectly good websites. How could the consumer not like their almighty efforts? Therefore, nobody would ever do a silly thing like disabling Flash, and must just be making silly little mistakes if Flash does not go.

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