position: relative

This happened to me in IE7, with an as3/flash using externalInterface: if inserted with swfObject the flash object is not initialized upon page reloads (the object tag is there, but only a white box is visible – even if the movie has a different bg color). It does work if a new tab is opened or the browser is opened and closed, but not with reload; the only solution that worked for me is the old non javascript insertion method; is this another swfObject bug?

Flash 10 on Firefox has some pretty weird problems if the flash object or the container is hidden and shown again.

Using show/hide totally destroys the externalInterface registered methods (in the flash, trying to call from js); position absolute, relative, or overflow hidden (zero sizing the container or locating it outside the visible area) doesn’t deregister the externalized methods, but renders them useless (meaning it will not throw a js error, it just won’t do a thing).

Without talking about the horrors of IE, in this case the solution seems to be the position absolute trick (left: -1000px or smg similar), remove the hider class to show the container then one must use a setTimeout to wait for the flash object to “stabilize”. If requested I can send an example, now I’m just too tired…