Well, it seems that Object Patent Magic is not without it’s problems. I originally intended for this to be a super tiny drop in patch that could be used on any existing site to solve the click to activate issue in IE. But while it does work on everything that I’ve deployed it with, it doesn’t work on all of everything (like the demo) in IE 6 (IE 7 seems fine). I’m not sure what is causing it, but the problem occurs when you attempt to load a large swf that hasn’t already been cached (meaning the first time someone loads your page).
Just to be sure that there wasn’t some easy solution that I could “borrow” from Karina Steffens, I tested ObjectSwap, and sadly, the problem exists there as well.
There is good news though. I don’t think this problem will turn up much, and the behavior is quite consistent, so it’s easy to test for. To test for it, clear your browser history and cache in IE 6. Then, test load up any pages that use Object Patent Magic or ObjectSwap. If the flash movies loads, you are fine. If you get the space where the movie should load, but it doesn’t load. You’ll have to use a different solution to get around the “click to activate” problem, at least for now.
On the horizon, I do have a new loader swf that I’ve been working on, which could be used to solve this problem. More on that later.
