"fuck" and "mac ie 4.5" are probably the most commonly combined phrases posted to any flash newsgroup. the browser really does have a seemingly endless list of problems. this page offers proof of most of them, and also gives us a place where we can test new versions of ie for mac to see if the problems get fixed. if you have information about a bug on mac ie, send it to maciebugs@moock.org so i can post it for everyone to see.
>>try it out (fixed in ie5)
in most browsers, links in a flash movie to pages or other files from a flash movie are followed relative to the html document that contains the movie. in ie 4.5 the links are followed relative to the .swf file, meaning that they will resolve differently if the .swf and the .html files are in separate directories. the workaround is to always place both the .swf and the .html file in the same folder.
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>>try it out (fixed in ie5)
detecting the flash plugin is impossible in ie 4.5 because it doesn't have the plugins property of the javascript navigator object. there's no direct workaround to this problem. ie 4.5 users should be sent to a page where they have to choose for themselves, or to the non-flash version of the site if there are links to the flash version from there.
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>>try it out (fixed in ie5)
apparently load movie doesn't work under some conditions with ie 4.5 and older. i haven't been able to reproduce a complete failure, but i could verify one bug demonstrated by karl at milkyelephant.com. karl shows that when you load a movie into a target clip and then jump to a frame where the target is no longer present before the external .swf has finished loading, the browser crashes. the browser also crashes when loading is canceled in any manner (eg. the user clicks the back button). this bug is fixed in ie5. here's karl's demo. if you have a problem with load movie in the test posted here under 4.5 or 5, let me know at maciebugs@moock.org.
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>>try it out (fixed in ie5)
strangely, calling a javascript using the javascript protocol from a geturl action doesn't work in ie 4.5. i say strange because this *does* work in ie3 on mac. so the following geturl would fail in 4.5:
Get URL ("javascript:alert("hi there");")
the only workaround is to load a page into a hidden frame that calls the javascript using the onload event handler.
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>>try it out (fixed in ie5)
submitting data to a server via the post http method does not work in ie 4.5. the workaround is to use the get method, which limits the length of sent data that can be sent to somewhere between 255 and 1024 characters depending on the server.
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>>try calling javascript via fs command (broken in 4.5 and 5)
>>try controlling flash with javascript (broken in 4.5 and 5)
communicating with the browser via fs command is not supported on mac ie. neither direction of communication is supported (flash calls javascript/javascript controls flash). this issue was not fixed in ie5.
- april 07, 2000: posted.
- june 16, 2000: added load movie demo by karl at milkyelephant.com
