Known Issues
none at this timeCheckPlayer [chekʹplāʹûr],(check-play-er) is a toolset for Flash Player plugin version detection, inline auto-updating, and easy SWF embedding on webpages. CheckPlayer augments the wonderful SWFObject 2.1 Library. All flensed projects rely on CheckPlayer for their underlying SWF operations.
If you're not familiar with the ground-breaking functionality that SWFObject provides, I encourage you to have a look at how their library works. Truly, it is the inspiration for a lot of how CheckPlayer and the whole flensed project works. However, there are some limitations (either technical or by design) in the way that SWFObject integrates itself onto the page (relying on DOMLoad event/simulation) which make it awkward or difficult to use in some scenarios. Out of these frustrations, CheckPlayer was born. Keep in mind that CheckPlayer uses the full SWFObject library, so by using CheckPlayer, you actually get both full libraries, and thus the best of both worlds.
Here is a comparison of some major features between the two, so you can decide if CheckPlayer makes more sense for your project rather than SWFObject alone:
| Feature | SWFObject 2.1 | CheckPlayer |
|---|---|---|
| Intialization | DOMLoad event detection (or simulation) | Timers; DOM inspection |
| Integration | Static <script> tag; dynamic script injection (**only allows a subset of functionality, because of DOMLoad event weirdness) | Static <script> tag; dynamic script injection (YUI.Get, document.createElement, etc) |
| Browser Support | IE5+, FF, Safari, Opera, Webkit, etc | Wide support, see flensed Documentation for details |
| SWF embed | Static option ('createSWF') HTML-inline; Dynamic option ('embedSWF' + DOMLoad event) HEAD scripts, replace DOM place-holder objects ("Alternative Content") | Dynamic option ('DoSWF'), call from anywhere, replace DOM place-holder objects ("Alternative Content") |
| Adobe Express Install | Static option, or Dynamic option only when using 'embedSWF' (which is limited to static inclusion of the SWFObject library), and only in-place of existing SWF elements, requiring certain minimum dimensions | Available regardless of script inclusion method, independent of page layout or content, arbitrary CSS styling can be applied to "container" of update SWF |
| API for status, "event" handling | DOMLoad event handler triggering, immediate boolean status only when adding SWF's via 'createSWF' | Callback handlers for plugin version detection, inline-update progress (COMPLETE, CANCELED, FAILED), and 'DoSWF' embed progress (INIT, LOADING, COMPLETE, TIMEOUT, FAILED, EI-READY) |
As you can see, for the most part, CheckPlayer simply packages and adds to the SWFObject core functionality in some useful ways that make SWF embedding and manipulation more robust and flexible. CheckPlayer does somewhat redefine the interaction model between the page and the SWF content to be embedded, and where this occurs, there is understandably some exclusion of certain SWFObject features. However, since SWFObject is fully present and active on the page thanks to CheckPlayer, web authors are free to mix-and-match functionality as they see fit.