Ok, well I think I have it, but working with object and embed tags is always hacky and nasty.

Take a look at http://www.norman.cx/tony/bad.html which I believe* gives the right behaviour with Flash installed and uninstalled for FF 2 and IE 7 at least. The hopefully working object tag ends up looking like this:

Code:
<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="http://www.vixyandtony.com/wimpy_button.swf?theFile=http://geekhackfilk.com/thirteen_samples/vixytony-13.mp3&amp;playingColor=007700&amp;grinderColor=007700&amp;rollOverColor=007700&amp;displayRewindButton=no" width="17" height="17">
	<param name="movie" value="http://www.vixyandtony.com/wimpy_button.swf?theFile=http://geekhackfilk.com/thirteen_samples/vixytony-13.mp3&amp;playingColor=007700&amp;grinderColor=007700&amp;rollOverColor=007700&amp;displayRewindButton=no" />
	<font size=1><a href="http://geekhackfilk.com/thirteen_samples/vixytony-13.mp3">(Sample)</a>&nbsp;</font>
</object>


The two main changes are dropping embed completely and stealing CDBaby's structuring of the object tag. Removing the embed means the Flash player won't work in old browsers though (CDBaby don't use the embed tag).

The "proper" way to do this would probably be to have just a single embed and single object that get manipulated by Javascript depending on the browser flavour, with the links left there when Javascript isn't present. That is kind of what the JC site does with some worryingly complex code.

This is one area where standard conformance isn't going to help much, the way the whole object/embed tag situation is a mess.

* I could well be wrong though, I got kind of bored installing and uninstalling Flash


Edited by andy (25/04/2008 21:16)
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