ExternalInterface Bug in Flash Player 9

Author: scott

28 Aug

In Flash Player 8 a lot of the work I have done on the Rolex suite of sites has worked fine, once the Flash Player 9 update came out we noticed some very mysterious Javascript errors and only in IE on a PC. The error was very undescriptive, Syntax Error Line 53. The other odd thing was nothing broke, all of the javascript was executed, and all of the actionscript was executed. We were simply doing a call down to a javascript that executed some tracking and analytics calls. It was a very basic ExternalInterface.call method call. We even commented out everything else in the Actionscript and Javascript functions. We still saw the error. Using Microsofts script debugger we discovered that the javascript error is in the Javascript that the Flash player appends to parent.window, this javascript is used in the communication between flash and the browser.

I put a call into Adobe/Macromedia support and they confirmed it is a bug in Flash Player 9 and will be fixed in the next release. Unfortunately they couldn’t tell me when the next player will be released. This bug isn’t documented on the Flash Player 9 bug page, however another strange and unrelated bug is. If you have a hyphen in the your swf file name ExternalInfterface communication will not work. I hope this is not a sign of what is to come with the Adobe future.

Let me know if anyone else has run into this issue.

Filed under: Actionscript, Flash, Flex

6 Responses for "ExternalInterface Bug in Flash Player 9"

khorri slaughter September 7th, 2007 at 3:57 pm 1
out of memory at line 56 keeps popping up how do I get rid of it
godai October 8th, 2007 at 12:00 pm 2
Hi, scott.

I got the similar problem to yours on using ExternalInterface.calls. JS call fails and EI.calls returns null. It occurs a few customers of millions. (We developed flex apps on No.1 Bank Site of Korea)

At this time, most customers in Korea are using Windows XP SP2 and IE6/7 and Flash Player 9.0.47.0. But the problem occurs as even.

Internet Banking Sites of Korea are so complicated. Usually, security activeX controls are more than 3 in that sites. So I think (at a guess) the problem is possible to be due to the flash player’s conflict with them.

Scott, Is your problem solved? And Do you think my problem is same type as yours?

I really hope you will see this comment and reply ASAP. My clients (in the Bank) are very harsh…. T_T

Truly yours
godai October 9th, 2007 at 11:43 pm 3
Very thnx. I’ll check the codes immediately.
Scott October 18th, 2007 at 11:44 pm 4
Godai,

Check out my EI Buffer class I wrote. It solved my problems for dropped EI calls, the script engine in browsers sometimes choke when multiple EI calls are sent.

http://blog.scottgmorgan.com/php/default.php?topicID=170&contentID=739&rowID=163

Also make sure you are using the most up to date version of SWFObject if you are seeing JS errors. I haven’t had any problems with any of the later versions.
Scott October 18th, 2007 at 11:55 pm 5
Khorri, are you using SWFObject?
I also have a problem with Flash Player 9 January 4th, 2008 at 8:38 pm 6
Hi,

I also got a problem with FP9.

After getting it installed my Js dropdown menu does not load. Instead, IE tries to continue the load forever.

If I uninstall FP9 the Js menu loads fine but I can´t see most of my SWF file.

The problem is that everybody has FP9 ’cause of upgrading.

Please, please, please can somebody tell me what to do — I’m really going crazy here.

Thanks a lot.

Carlos.