Unsurprisingly, Internet Explorer 8 broke yet another feature of the web.
This time, the folks at Redmond broke how Internet Explorer passes the flashvars parameter into Flash. Typically, when placing a Flash object on an HTML page, you use the following syntax:
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<object id= "flv" classid= "clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width= "692" height= "516" codebase= "<a href=" http: // download . macromedia . com / pub / shockwave / cabs / flash / swflash . cab # version= 9,0,0,0"" > http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#vers...</a> align="middle">
<param name= "allowScriptAccess" value= "sameDomain" />
<param name= "allowFullScreen" value= "true" />
<param name= "quality" value= "high" />
<param name= "bgcolor" value= "#424242" />
<param name= "FlashVars" value= "name=value" />
<param name= "wmode" value= "transparent" />
<embed type= "application/x-shockwave-flash" width= "692" height= "516" src= "<a href=" http: // www . example . com / mysample . swf "" > http://www.example.com/mysample.swf"</a> align="middle" pluginspage="<a href= "http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" " > http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"</a> flashvars="name=value" quality="high" bgcolor="#424242" wmode="transparent" allowscriptaccess="sameDomain" allowfullscreen="true" name="flv"></embed>
<param name= "movie" value= "<a href=" http: // www . example . com / mysample . swf "" > http://www.example.com/mysample.swf"</a> />
</object>
The OBJECT tag is used by Internet Explorer and the EMBED tag is used by everyone else (Firefox, Safari, etc.). Although the flashvars paramter is not formally described in the HTML 4.0.1 spec , this code worked fine with IE 6 and IE 7. Unfortunately, IE 8 does not pass flashvars into the Flash Player. The only work around is to pass the flashvars parameter as part of the movie name parameter, as shown below:
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<object id= "flv" classid= "clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width= "692" height= "516" codebase= "<a href=" http: // download . macromedia . com / pub / shockwave / cabs / flash / swflash . cab # version= 9,0,0,0"" > http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#vers...</a> align="middle">
<param name= "allowScriptAccess" value= "sameDomain" />
<param name= "allowFullScreen" value= "true" />
<param name= "quality" value= "high" />
<param name= "bgcolor" value= "#424242" />
<param name= "FlashVars" value= "name=value" />
<param name= "wmode" value= "transparent" />
<embed type= "application/x-shockwave-flash" width= "692" height= "516" src= "<a href=" http: // www . example . com / mysample . swf "" > http://www.example.com/mysample.swf"</a> align="middle" pluginspage="<a href= "http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" " > http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"</a> flashvars="name=value" quality="high" bgcolor="#424242" wmode="transparent" allowscriptaccess="sameDomain" allowfullscreen="true" name="flv"></embed>
<param name= "movie" value= "<a href=" http: // www . example . com / mysample . swf ? name= value"" > http://www.example.com/mysample.swf?name=value"</a> />
</object>