The Flash Satay method to embed flash in your pages and support standards
Added on Tuesday 5 Oct 2004
This weeks tip: Use the Flash Satay method to embed flash in your pages and support standards
The standard way to embed flash within a web page is to use the object element; the W3C tell us that the object element is an, 'all-purpose solution to generic object inclusion'. So that's fine and handy - however, the object element is not supported by all web browsers. Developers have tried to work around this deficiency by adding the non-standard (but working) embed tag into their markup - effectively repeating all the necessary attributes in each tag.
Using the embed tag means that pages will no longer validate - a situation which makes developers who pride themselves on their adherence to standards rather uncomfortable. During a discussion about this issue on the Guild of Accessible Web Designers mailing list, I was alerted to an article by Drew Mclellan who addresses this very problem. Drew provides a solution that ensures flash works in many more browsers without failing validation tests, a solution he calls the, 'Flash Satay method'.
For the full story and his detailed solution of how to embed flash in your pages and keep them standard compliant, read Drew's excellent article at http://www.alistapart.com/articles/flashsatay/