Hi Everyone,

A common request on this board is how to detect if the user has the Flash plugin on their system, quite important to show your Swish SWF's you'll agree, but if the user does not have the plugin you can at least break it gently to them that they need to download it.

For years now (yes, I've been making sites that long) I've always tried to find the perfect detection system, I tried JavaScript, Java Applets & VBScript ... all of which can never be perfect on different platforms, and I keep seeing people posting their own ideas.

The best option by far, and it seems 100%, is what I call SWF Redirection, in which the SWF itself does the detection ... how?, well if it loaded on the users system : they must have the plugin !!!

So, I've re-written the SWF redirection thing in Swish rather than Flash, this way you all can use it.

The demo can be found at: http://findfile.co.uk

This index has a small SWF which if run, redirects to the flash site i.e. flash.html
If the SWF does NOT load (missing plugin etc), then a META tag after 10 seconds will direct the user to noflash.html
As far as I've found out, Meta tags work on all browsers and cannot be switched off (unlike JavaScript at al)

Please all help yourself to the source HTML (a credit left in the code would be nice )
And the source SWI for the redirecting SWF written in Swish is at http://findfile.co.uk/redirect.swi

Essential files:
----------------
index.html = contains the redirection if the SWF does not load.
NOTE: you will find a line which reads:
<param name="base" value="http://findfile.co.uk/">
This needs to be changed to reflect your own web address (i.e. http://www.ndirect.co.uk/~shea/ )

redirect.swf = redirects to flash.html when run.
You can of course have a 18x18 sized invisible SWF which redirects after 1 second ... no need to tell the user what's going on, mine is 400x60 with text and a delay.

flash.html = the flash doorway to your web site
(i.e. http://findfile.co.uk/flash.html )

noflash.html = the non-flash doorway to your site
(i.e. http://findfile.co.uk/noflash.html )

Hope this helps everyone ... there is nothing worse than a user calling you to say they saw nothing on the site because you have no detection!

regards,
Richard Shea.