(What is) the future of xhtml, xml and Flash?

hey guys the other night Carbonize was giving me some great pointers in xhtml coding .... I hate bothering people over and over again w/ my dumb questions so I'm putting this out here in this forum.....

as I was informed that

" the embed tag and this is not a valid tag according to W3C specifications"
something I did not know as I'm the king of getting caught w/ non-standard code violations...

what then are we supposed to do to embed our .swf files? can .swf files be elements in xml documents? can they be writtten into schemas?

what is the future of FLash and xhtml/xml?

DAREN
http://WebPageTurner.com

[Narasinha]

THe <EMBED> tag was created by Netscape to provide access to Netscape plugins. Microsoft also began support for this tag, though they suggested the <OBJECT> tag the W3C developed. <EMBED> has never actually been an official HTML tag.

The <OBJECT> tag, intended to replace and absorb the many methods in use to include multi-media and embedded content in HTML documents, is a part of all HTML 4.x and XHTML DTDs. It may (in XHTML 2 for example) eventually replace APPLET and IMG elements as well. Unfortunately, as it was not a part of the HTML 3.2 specifications, its earlier support is a bit dodgy.

Originally Posted by Index Dot HTML

• Internet Explorer 3.0 only appears to support the use of OBJECT for use in replacing the APPLET and EMBED elements.
  The use of OBJECT for creating shaped hyperlinks is not supported in Internet Explorer.
• Use of OBJECT to import images, videos and sounds is also not supported by Internet Explorer 3.0/4.0. Limited support exists for this in version 5.0.
• Late versions of Netscape 4.0 seem to support this element after a fashion. It is nowhere near complete with respect to the W3C specification, and is often spotty. PC versions of 4.0 do not seem to have OBJECT support (although late betas seem to have had some), while a final Macintosh version of 4.0 did support it under at least one case. If any real support exists for this element in Netscape 4.0, it would appear to be an exception to the rule of the specification.
• According to a document on the Mozilla web site, Netscape 6 also supports these attributes (of course they don't have ANY explanation of how these attributes are used with this claim): HIDDEN, and MAYSCRIPT. I have not seen these attributes mentioned elsewhere, and have not been able to verify yet if these attributes are supported or not, nor do I know their exact usage if so.

The <OBJECT> tag has lots of possible attributes, as you can see if you check Index Dot HTML's <OBJECT> Page.

Originally Posted by Narasinha

THe <EMBED> tag was created by Netscape to provide access to Netscape plugins. Microsoft also began support for this tag, though they suggested the <OBJECT> tag the W3C developed. <EMBED> has never actually been an official HTML tag.

The <OBJECT> tag has lots of possible attributes, as you can see if you check Index Dot HTML's <OBJECT> Page.

Thanks a lot Narashina>
In addition to your reference links i was combing the web for more info and found this informative article by Drew McClellan
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/flashsatay

which is a primer on embedding swf files into xhtml documents w/ out using EMBED tag....

I highly suggest those interested to read it any if any techs can find another way that is cross-browser friendly please let me know

heres'a nutshell of the rather long article:

Basically, what Drew is saying is to make a container Flash w/
_root.loadMovie(_root.path,0); in frame oneAction

this will make the player load the the movie (w name in v.path on the root) into _level0 of the current movie.

so we call the movie

c.swf?path=the_movie.swf

and container movie is c.swf. so upon evaluation, we get

_root.loadMovie("the_movie.swf",0);

and the the code mark-up.............

<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
data="c.swf?path=movie.swf"
width="400" height="300">
<param name="the_movie"
value="c.swf?path=the_movie.swf" />
</object>

and then he goes on to say that the only drawback is loosing the use of the codebase attribute which would prompt the user for upadate if pluggin was old--not updated ...........(so we put a dummy transparent one frame swf file somewhere on page w/ codebase still in it.....)

OK any techs out there see any problems w/ using the approach above?
Any things to look out 4?
lemme know if ya do!

DAREN!
http://WebPageTurner.com

[mysticlighthouse]

there's one drawback to the satay method posted on A List Apart which Zeldman discusses in his book "Designing with Web Standards".

He stated that after publishing the article that some visitors saw nothing but a blank text area although most users were able to view it as intendend. This wasn't just browser specific, but was reported on a wide range of browsers from Mozilla, Konqueror and Internet Explorer to name a few.

If interested the entire subject is covered in his book on page 294

[Narasinha]

Yes, I find it disturbing that the one tag that is legal to use for including media such as flash in not very well supported in any of the current browsers. Let's hope that someone can come up with a decent standard way of including multimedia in XHTML Strict.