For the Walldogs website we ran into some strange issues dealing with Flash. This is a non-issue for browsers that support the HTMLVideoElement, however not every browser does yet, so we must deal with the reality.
Usually when you put an object or embed tag for Flash in the DOM in Internet Explorer it will prompt you to install the plugin, and it does this pretty easily. However there are some instances where installing Flash just isn’t possible and the prompt would or not appear at all, or they may have the wrong version of Flash. So for mobile phones, and 64-bit machines with 64-bit browsers, and browsers running old versions of Flash, there would have been a road block to viewing the site.
We need to address situations were JavaScript is available but Flash is not and the browser doesn’t support the HTMLVideoElement. So on the Walldogs site I used two JavaScript libraries to determine a few things: SWFObject.js to determine if Flash is installed and what version, and MDetect.js to see if the website is being viewed from a mobile device. So if someone is viewing the website without Flash, the are not required to install it to get basic information from the website, it skips the video and goes straight to the page, and a message on the top of the page that gives notice to the visitor that they are viewing the website with missing features and to install a browser that will support it.
If you’re on a mobile device or using a browser that uses JavaScript, doesn’t support the HTMLVideoElement, and you don’t have Flash installed, take a look at the Walldogs website. Then take a look at it in a browser that does support the HTMLVideoElement.
Thanks for posting this. I’m working on browser redirection for handhelds, and now that I’ve struggled through figuring out the PHP detection and redirects, I’m starting on Javascript. Wishing someone had a simple recipe for non-technical people…oh, wait. That’s what I’m trying to write.
Was very glad to find your post and take a look under the hood of the site.
Joe