Flash, ActiveX and PHP integration

[Turner]

Hi there,
I'm not a flash programmer myself but I work with some of them. It
seems whenever I browse to a page developped by these folks the browser
receives it as if there were ActiveX content (but there is none). I
think there is a relationship between ActiveX and Flash, but I believe
they are separate. The problem is, on explorer, for security and
sanity reason I have completely disabled activeX and it prevents me
from seeing the Flash page or intro saying my security settings are in
the way.

I once met a guy, a very good website designer (he was doing
competitions and stuff) he told me that when using PHP, you can
actually set some options that will not trigger the use of ActiveX on
an imbedded Flash animation. The guy was fired from the company and I
could never get a hold of him again. Does anybody here know what those
options could be?

Thanks a lot,
Turner

[Ben Long]

Hi Turner,

I may be wrong, however my understanding of the embedded object (in
this case, the flash player) implies the use of ActiveX within the IE
environment.

<object>
<embed>
</object>

If you do find your answer, please do share with us.

Thanks.

[Benjamin Niemann]

Turner wrote:

Hi there,
I'm not a flash programmer myself but I work with some of them. It
seems whenever I browse to a page developped by these folks the browser
receives it as if there were ActiveX content (but there is none). I
think there is a relationship between ActiveX and Flash, but I believe
they are separate. The problem is, on explorer, for security and
sanity reason I have completely disabled activeX and it prevents me
from seeing the Flash page or intro saying my security settings are in
the way.
Plug-ins for IE are implemented as ActiveX components. Netscape invented a
different API for plug-ins which is supported by most other browsers (and
OS indenpendent).
I once met a guy, a very good website designer (he was doing
competitions and stuff) he told me that when using PHP, you can
actually set some options that will not trigger the use of ActiveX on
an imbedded Flash animation. The guy was fired from the company and I
could never get a hold of him again. Does anybody here know what those
options could be?

PHP cannot do anything on the client-side that an ordinary static HTML file
(and perhaps some server config to get non-default HTTP headers) cannot do.
There are certainly many ways to get around IEs security settings (if they
deserve this term at all) - but this is usually used to distribute malware,
don't use it unless you're a virus writer.

--
Benjamin Niemann
Email: pink at odahoda dot de
WWW: http://www.odahoda.de/

[Turner]

Thank you guys for your replies.

It does confirm the relationship I was thinking of between ActiveX and
Flash.

However, the guy I told you about in my first post did prove to me it
would work. I think it may have to do with headers as I agree with
you, nothing else could bypass such feature from IE. But basically the
guy did it in front of me, in a file.html with the object pointing to a
flash animation and a file.php with some php code pointing to same
animation. With my security settings the file.html would not display,
while the file.php would show the anim right away.

I made more searches, found this page:
http://cain.supersized.org/archives/....js-files.html

the conclusion for IE is this:
"create script element and wait until loaded using onreadystatechanged
(to be able use when ActiveX is off)"

But I remember there was a function in php that looked much simpler
than that...

[Benjamin Niemann]

Turner wrote:

Thank you guys for your replies.

It does confirm the relationship I was thinking of between ActiveX and
Flash.

However, the guy I told you about in my first post did prove to me it
would work. I think it may have to do with headers as I agree with
you, nothing else could bypass such feature from IE. But basically the
guy did it in front of me, in a file.html with the object pointing to a
flash animation and a file.php with some php code pointing to same
animation. With my security settings the file.html would not display,
while the file.php would show the anim right away.
(Just guessing, not experience here...) Perhaps you disabled ActiveX only in
the 'untrusted zone' and an added P3P header triggered a different security
zone in IE. But this is not 'using flash although ActiveX is disabled',
because it's enabled in that zone.
It does not stop people from disabling ActiveX in that zone too.
And it's not PHP specific, you could achive the same thing with the right
server config.
I made more searches, found this page:
http://cain.supersized.org/archives/....js-files.html
the conclusion for IE is this:
"create script element and wait until loaded using onreadystatechanged
(to be able use when ActiveX is off)"
I can't see a connection to your problem here...
It deals with dynamically loading more JavaScript without using the IE
equivalent of XMLHTTPRequest, which uses an ActiveX component.
But I remember there was a function in php that looked much simpler
than that...

Again, there's nothing PHP could do about it. The browser only gets the HTTP
headers and the document itself, it does not care and cannot know, if these
come from a static file or where created by a server-side script.
The default HTTP headers (inserted by the server) are often different for
static files and dynamic pages, but that nothing that could not be fixed.

--
Benjamin Niemann
Email: pink at odahoda dot de
WWW: http://www.odahoda.de/

[Turner]

Thanks Benjamin,
I really thought I had disabled ActiveX properly as I've been doing
so with thousands of clients while doing tech support for a year. And
I visited a page that displayed a flash animation and didnt give the
usual "Your security parameters do not permit to use the ActiveX
controls on this computer. The page will not display property."
(translated from the french error message) and Not displaying the
animation.
The friend, who did Website design competitions and showed me
impressive stuff also told me the magic was coming from the PHP options
he had set in his page where the object is imbedded.
In other words, using PHP and IE, one would be able to display a
flash animation regardless ActiveX is fully active or totally disabled.

If only I could remember what the code was, I'd share this with you,
but I can't recall.

Turner