Despite intending to play with Flickr, I still haven’t got any decent images up, so here is a little gradient star on a transparent background, to see how WordPress likes playing with images.
I setup a little CSS class for images, and edited the post using the HTML button, to stick the CSS in. Not bad.
Well my first Flash file doesn’t seem to be indexed at Google yet, although the actual post and page that contain it are. Maybe it’s something to do with the Flash file itself….
Although after reading Geoff Stearns post about Flash optimisation, I shouldn’t care, as in the ideal world all the content would have been separate (in an XML file) from the Flash fancy bits. Oops.
So this Flash file was to test the IE ActiveX problem, where interactive Flash files need to be clicked on to activate them, as a result of Microsoft losing a patent issue on 11 April 2006. They had to change the IE browser to no longer automatically display automatically Flash files that are interactive.ﾃつ So whatever, I wanted to see if this little ugly Flash button worked correctly on hover, without needing an activation click first.
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.geekmum.com.au/wp-content/purplebutton.swf"" height="70" width="80" /]
Well,ﾃつ FireFox wasn’t affected, as the patent-holder likes Open Source programs. And Crazybrowser also didn’t seem to be affected, which was wierd, as it is based on IE.ﾃつ But sure enough, the standard Flash call using object/embed didn’t work in IE - it needed an extra click to activate it. So it was time to experiment, to see which of the proffered solutions was best, at least for WordPress.
So I Googled IE ActiveX Wordpress fix to get some answers.ﾃつ
There was the official IE site. Full ofﾃつ high-tech explanations.
Adobe had an interesting-looking solution, and I was about to follow the instructions there, about Geoff Stearns SWFObject method for calling Flash objects, when I finally stuck gold.
http://www.kimili.com/plugins/kml_flashembed/wpﾃつ had a wonderful plug-in for Wordpress that even lets you put more than one Flash object on a page. So for the heck of it, here are two more instances of the ugly Flash button, one with a different name, to see if it made a difference.
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.geekmum.com.au/wp-content/purplebutton.swf"" height="70" width="80" /]
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.geekmum.com.au/wp-content/purplebutton2.swf"" height="70" width="80" /]