IE ActiveX Change"Click to activate and use this control"

Using Comments Solution

2006-04-23T12:21:00.000+01:00

This solution is very similar to the <div> solution published earlier, however the original <div> solution had a few problems due to the fact that IE would request the swf twice, once for the hidden div, and again when the JavaScript wrote the contents back out again. It also sometimes caused IE to think it was still loading an item, even though the page had finished loading. This solution gets around the problem by preventing IE loading the initial swf by using comments.

First of all create a JavaScript file called, say, ieupdate.js, containing the following code:


var bo_ns_id = 0;

function startIeFix(){
  if(isIE()){
    document.write('<div id="bo_ns_id_' + bo_ns_id + '"><!-- ');
  }
}

function endIeFix(){
  if(isIE()){
    document.write('</div>');
    var theObject = document.getElementById("bo_ns_id_" + bo_ns_id++);
    var theCode = theObject.innerHTML;
    theCode = theCode.substring(4 ,9+theCode.indexOf("</object>"))
    document.write(theCode);
  }
}

function isIE(){
  // only for Win IE 6+
  // But not in Windows 98, Me, NT 4.0, 2000
  var strBrwsr= navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase();
  if(strBrwsr.indexOf("msie") > -1 && strBrwsr.indexOf("mac") < 0){
    if(parseInt(strBrwsr.charAt(strBrwsr.indexOf("msie")+5)) < 6){
      return false;
    }
    if(strBrwsr.indexOf("win98") > -1 ||
       strBrwsr.indexOf("win 9x 4.90") > -1 ||
       strBrwsr.indexOf("winnt4.0") > -1 ||
       strBrwsr.indexOf("windows nt 5.0") > -1)
    {
      return false;
    }
    return true;
  }else{
    return false;
  }
}

This will then need to be included within the <head> tags for each page:

<script type="text/javascript" src="ieupdate.js"></script>

Then you need to include a line directly before, and directy after each <object> tag:

<script type="text/javascript">startIeFix();</script>
<object ...
etc etc
</object>
<!-- --><script
type="text/javascript">endIeFix();</script>

Note: Although the empty comment tag doesn't seem to do anything, it is necessary to get the closing comment tag (-->), otherwise once IE has written out the starting comment tag it will treat everything as a comment until it reaches a closing comment.

As the code is extracted from the comments the swf file isn't requested nor loaded until it is rewritten by the external JavaScript.

Rewrite div solution

2006-04-21T12:25:00.000+01:00

This solution is very similar to the <noscript> solution published earlier, but my original version using <divs> didn't work if you used FlashVars parameters. However, thanks to a suggestion in the Flash Forums from hemels I've updated to JavaScript to workaround the problem.

First of all create a JavaScript file called, say, ieupdate.js, containing the following code:

var bo_ns_id = 0;

function startIeFix(){
  if(isIE()){
    document.write('<div style="display: none;" id="bo_ns_id_' + bo_ns_id + '">');
  }
}

function endIeFix(){
  if(isIE()){
    document.write('</div>');
    var theObject = document.getElementById("bo_ns_id_" + bo_ns_id++);
    if(theObject.firstChild.data){
      theObject.firstChild.removeAttribute('data');
    }
    var theParams = theObject.getElementsByTagName("param");
    var theParamsLength = theParams.length;
    for (var j = 0; j < theParamsLength; j++) {
      if(theParams[j].name.toLowerCase() == 'flashvars'){
        var theFlashVars = theParams[j].value;
      }
    }
    var theInnnerHTML = theObject.innerHTML;
    var re = /<param name="FlashVars" value="">/ig;
    theInnnerHTML = theInnnerHTML.replace(re, "<param name='FlashVars' value='" + theFlashVars + "'>");
    theObject.outerHTML = theInnnerHTML;
  }
}

function isIE(){
  var strBrwsr = navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase();
  if(strBrwsr.indexOf("msie") > -1 && strBrwsr.indexOf("mac") < 0){
    return true;
  }else{
    return false;
  }
}

This will then need to be included within the <head> tags for each page:

<script type="text/javascript" src="ieupdate.js"></script>

Then you need to include a line directly before, and directy after each <object> tag:

<script type="text/javascript">startIeFix();</script>
<object ...
etc etc
</object>
<script type="text/javascript">endIeFix();</script>

And that is it! The code checks for IE on a PC, and so doesn't affect any other browsers, the <object> is enclosed in a div with its display style set to 'none', and so doesn't run until the external javscript writes it back out (therefore doesn't cause any double running issues), and the code still maintains any FlashVars too!

Simple Write Out (With optional RegEx)

2006-04-20T14:57:00.000+01:00

An alternative to all the official solutions is instead of passing through a list of parameters and attributes for the width, height, bgcolor etc which the receiving JavaScript function then needs to join together again, is to simply pass the entire <object> to a JavaScript function that writes it back out to the screen.

The JavaScript function for this is very simple:

function ieoutput(theText){
   document.write(theText);
}

The tricky part comes with replacing the <object> tag with a call to the JavaScript function, and including it in a <noscript> tag too, to allow for browsers with javaScript disabled.

So that the final code looks like:

<script type="text/javascript">echocontent('<object ...' +
'your code' +
'your code' +
'</object>')
</script>
<noscript>
<object ...
your code
</object>
</noscript>

As a short cut, we can use the Regular Expression Search and Replace feature of TextPad.

For the normal 7 lines of HTML code for Flash we can search for:

\(.*\)\n\(.*\)\n\(.*\)\n\(.*\)\n\(.*\)\n\(.*\)\n\(.*\)

And replace with:

<script type="text/javascript">ieoutput('\1'
\+\n '\2' \+\n '\3' \+\n '\4' \+\n '\5' \+\n '\6' \+\n
'\7')\n</script>\n<noscript>\n&\n</noscript>

If you have a different number of lines in your <object> the Regular Expression can be changed accordingly.