Aral Balkan

The web standards project has a terribly elitist post by Ben Henick that is an unfair and uninformed dismissal of SWFObject. In the post Ben states:

As for SWFObject, it serves a purpose that I might have someday in the face of a tight deadline, relaxed project requirements, or a requirement for the most recent version of Flash. However, I’ve been through every line of SWFObject’s code and can state with confidence that while it obeys the letter of the W3C Recommendations, it totally disregards their spirit.

I must always be faced with tight deadlines and relaxed project requirements because I use SWFObject quite often.

So if we shouldn't use SWFObject, what is Ben's recommendation? Apparently, according to The Web Standards Project, we are supposed to use methods that embed SWF files using only the Object tag. If you feel that there's a distinct disconnect between this recommendation and your own experience of reality as a Flash developer, join the club! I'm not going to go into detail about why this is such a bad idea here as Geoff Stearns has already done a great job of responding on his blog post. I believe that the following quote from his post summarizes it best:

Using only the object tag to embed your plugin content (especially Flash content) is fucking stupid.

I highly recommend that you read Geoff's post and I have to say that I agree wholeheartedly with it both in letter and in spirit.

Comments

• I think MS is behind this in their secret subversive attempt to destroy the future of Flash...okay maybe not but seriously, I love SWF Object, and so do all my clients and users...I only wish I had more clients and users, sigh. THX for the heads up, aral! Geoff's article is the truth.

  by LEE on 2006-08-18 16:34:08

• "I’ve been through every line of SWFObject’s code and can state with confidence that while it obeys the letter of the W3C Recommendations, it totally disregards their spirit" That is one lame sentence. I've always been a huge voice for Web Standards because they work. But I think that using Javascript solutions to common web problems is perfectly acceptable. By writing code that renders mark up to that standard is completely in the spirit of WASP's goals. Some of these WASP folks are the same people that wrote about ghetto css hacks a few years back but I didn't hear anyone from WASP complaining about THAT disregarding the spirit. Truly amazing.

  by Brandon Ellis on 2006-08-17 03:02:56

• Brandon, I couldn't agree with you more and I'll go one further: It seems like the Embed vs. Object matter has become something of a pissing contest for The Web Standards Project, reality be damned. Object is their darling but is *not* a standard. You can yell till you're blue in the face but if something doesn't work across the board, I wouldn't call it a standard. On the other hand, there's the perfectly valid Embed tag which, for some reason (The Web Standards history page doesn't mention why) is the black sheep in the family even though it works in every browser. Hmm... so let's see, Embed works the same way in every browser. Wow! Sounds pretty *standard* to me! So why, apart from ego, isn't Embed written into the standard? Web standards and practicality should not be polar opposites if the movement is to have relevance.

  by aral on 2006-08-17 11:01:54

• IIRC, embed wasn't included because it doesn't allow for fallback content (unlike object). Of course it's all a moot point, because IE cocked up their implementation of object and now everybody has to stay compatible with that...

  by Olly on 2006-08-17 14:21:03

• That ol' EMBED tag... That ol' EMBED tag: I've been reading the standardista/flashista debate [[1], [2], [3], [4]]... I'm really uncomfortable, I like and respect both groups of people, even though we may not agree precisely on all issues. (Core issue: HTML 4.0 spec outl...

  by JD on EP on 2006-08-18 06:47:31