SWFObject 2.0 review

SWFObject 2.0 was released just a few days ago . I’ve used SWFObject about a million times over the last couple of years, so I was excited to see the new version’s release. 2.0 definitely has some improvements.

You now have two options for embedding your SWF file with SWFObject. Option one lets you embed your SWF with standards compliant code while still being able to view the SWF even if JavaScript is not enabled. Option 2 your alternate content dynamically with your SWF using Javascript (aka progressive enhancement). The second option works much the same way as previous versions of SWFObject worked. There’s also still plenty of support for easily adding FlashVars and any params you need as well.

SWFObject 2.0 is still very easy to implement. Option 1 is a little more complicated due to the need for a redundant line or two of code. But it’s still the simplest method of getting standards compliant SWF embed code I’ve seen.

For more specifics on which option to use when and why, see the SWFObject 2.0 documentation.

To get SWFObject 2.0 go to their google code page. They offer a zip of the sample files as well as an AIR app and HTML wizard of sorts to generate the code for you.

I thought the AIR app was a pretty cool idea for someone who doesn’t getting in to all that code, but it’s definitely still in need of some work. The interface was very barebones and it displayed some wacky improperly encoded characters when I tried to use it. To be fair, the code looked fine when pasted into Dreamweaver, but still, that makes it difficult to use at best.

Have a comment or question? Find me on twitter or email me.