Member Avatar for DanMcLinden

Hi,

Just bought a small flash music player for my "homemade" small business website and it works perfectly in the major browsers (Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera) except ...

In IE 6/7/8 it works till I click a photo on the same page for lightbox view, but then the player disappears. The music stays on or off according to last player selection but the player does not come back unless I refresh the page.

Wondering if there is a simple solution I just haven't been able to Google yet or if I'm looking at something more complex like a lightbox or swfobject upgrade. I'm not the greatest of coders but I did manage to find the parameter to keep the player from layering over the larger photos.

Page in question at

Thanks in advance for any help,
Dan M

  • 1 Contributor
  • 1 Reply
  • 128 Views
  • 22 Hours Discussion Span
  • Latest Post Latest Post by DanMcLinden

Dani AI

Generated

Internet Explorer (especially IE6–8) has a known rendering quirk with windowless Flash (the wmode parameter set to opaque or transparent): the SWF can continue playing audio but stop repainting after DOM changes such as opening or closing a lightbox. That explains why the player’s controls vanish in IE while audio continues. ’s decision to serve an IE-specific page without the visible player is a safe short-term workaround for live clients.

Quick diagnosis steps:

  • Inspect the page source for the Flash embed/object and look for a wmode param or embed attribute.
  • Temporarily remove or set wmode="window" and retest in IE to see if the control reappears (this proves the windowless-mode repaint issue). Note: overlays may then render beneath the SWF.
  • Use IE’s developer tools (F12) to watch for script errors or DOM changes when the lightbox opens/closes.

Practical fixes (ranked by minimal impact → robust):

  • If overlay-on-top is not essential, remove wmode (or set window) to avoid the bug.
  • Isolate the player inside an iframe so the lightbox can stack above it without changing the SWF’s mode.
  • Force a quick reinitialization of the SWF after the lightbox closes — a simple remove-and-reinsert of the container will often force IE to recreate the plugin:
var c = document.getElementById('playerWrap');
var html = c.innerHTML;
c.innerHTML = '';
setTimeout(function(){ c.innerHTML = html; }, 50);

That approach is crude but effective; to preserve playback state, capture the player’s time/volume via its JS API before teardown and restore after reinsert.

Longer-term options: upgrade the lightbox/swfobject to versions that handle plugin stacking, prefer visibility toggles or offscreen positioning over display:none, or migrate to an HTML5 audio solution to avoid Flash compatibility issues altogether.

Member Avatar for DanMcLinden

Hi Again,

After having a day at the office to dwell on it, I decided that IE users who click the photo on the main page will be directed to a copy of the lightbox-page that has the music but not the player. Not the ideal solution, but better than leaving an issue like this exposed to potential photograph-clients...

Thanks to those who looked, Dan M

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.