SWFObject plugin Update

Almost two months ago the fine folks at SWFObject did release the 2.2 version, so finally I've modified the FCKeditor plugin to make it use that version by default.

What does it means to you?

-If you don't use my plugin, not too much. Maybe you can take a look at it anyway if you are a FCKeditor user and don't like embeds.

-If you use the plugin, but are using a version of SWFObject hosted in your server, then you don't need to upgrade my plugin. Anyway, you might want to upgrade your copy of SWFObject, and if you place it with a different filename, then the upgrade of my plugin might be useful or you might end up including in the pages a link to the old library and another to the new one. Sorry, I didn't thought about it.

-If you are using the plugin and are relying on the externally hosted library, then it would be good to upgrade the plugin. The caveat is that you need to open and save again any page with a reference to the plugin to get it updated (unless your CMS has some option to do a search&replace in all the content). The good part is that even if you don't touch the existing content, the new files will use the new version.

Enjoy it

One month later...

It's funny how sometimes the events can make it look like something is pulling the strings, but it happens that version 1.3 of the SwfObject plugin was released on 26th of September. Just one month later I released the 1.4 version that made it possible to use it with any site offering the typical <object> or <embed> code.

And now, exactly one month later another version is ready.

This one is even easier to install, now you only have to install this plugin and add the line to load it in your fckconfig.js file. The swfobject libreary will be loaded by default from the Google hosted servers. You can read about it in the SwfObject wiki: http://code.google.com/p/swfobject/wiki/hosted_library

Of course, you can keep on using your own hosted version, nothing has changed about that.

The other changes are related to people trying to paste videos. Well it turns out that even easy is not enough for some of them, and instead of trying to paste the code marked as "copy this video to embed this video" they want to paste the url of the page.

Ok, no problem, now some of those servers are automatically detected (YouTube, GoogleVideo, MetaCafe and the new MTV music). It's very easy to add new urls, but I don't wanna waste the time with it, there are too many sites around, and that people should learn to copy the correct code ;-)

Lastly a CDATA wrapper has been added to make those ones using XHTML pass validation.

The demo and download page are still the same: http://martinezdelizarrondo.com/swfobject/

SWFObject, even easier to use

The new 1.4 release of the SWFObject plugin for FCKeditor does add automatic detection of typical flash embedding code:

<object width="425" height="344"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/nj2hewPBQh0&hl=es&fs=1"></param> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param> <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/nj2hewPBQh0&hl=es&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed> </object>

So pasting that line in the Url field of the flash dialog will parse it and the movie will be properly embeded in your page.

It also adds two configuration options to specify the minimum flash version for your movies and the path to the Express Install movie if you want to use it. Check the documentation of the SWFObject project to use those features.

 

Updated swfobject plugin

IE, what to say about it. The browser you love to hate.

If you want the SWFObject to run in it you'll need to get the updated plugin, hopefully there are no more bad surprises hidden there.

Goodbye embed, Hello SWFObject

When I first released the GoogleMaps plugin, I did mention that it included some code that could make "easy" the task to integrate things like SWFObject in FCKeditor, and it was just a matter of someone willing to code it or sponsor such development.

Recently I've been asked to carry that task for InControl Solutions, I've included also some extra code to allow editing of Flashvars and everything is available in the demo for the new swfobject plugin for FCKeditor.

What could be improved?

• The ability to edit the alternative content
• Using the static publishing method
• Development of additional plugins for specific Flash usage based on this one (I mean, reusing most of the code)

But for the moment I don't have plans to do any of those tasks, so just check that it works for you and use it.