HTML5 and player with Flash fallforward

The initial release of MediaElement.js included Flash detection derived from SWFObject and Silverlight detection from Microsoft’s own Silverlight.js files.

The problem was that this code didn’t adhere to a common coding standard, and I received a few negative comments on the code.

So as part of the process of re-writing MediaElement.js to be JSLint compliant and work well with YICompressor, I’ve built a new plugin detection system that very small and can be extended to work with other browser plugins like Adobe Reader if someone wanted to.

As usual IE does things one way (ActiveX) and other browsers do it another way (navigator.plugins), so the detection scheme has to check for both. Another difficulty is that Silverlight does not return a version number in IE, and instead only returns true or false to an isVersionSupported function. So to get the version for IE, you have to loop through all possibilities which is pretty nasty.

Here is the completed code for the PluginDetector object, which includes the core detection logic as well as Flash and Silverlight detection routines:

mejs.PluginDetector = {

	// main public function to test a plug version number PluginDetector.hasPluginVersion('flash',[9,0,125]);
	hasPluginVersion: function(plugin, v) {
		var pv = this.plugins[plugin];
		v[1] = v[1] || 0;
		v[2] = v[2] || 0;
		return (pv[0] > v[0] || (pv[0] == v[0] && pv[1] > v[1]) || (pv[0] == v[0] && pv[1] == v[1] && pv[2] >= v[2])) ? true : false;
	},

	// cached values
	nav: window.navigator,
	ua: window.navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase(),		

	// stored version numbers
	plugins: [],

	// runs detectPlugin() and stores the version number
	addPlugin: function(p, pluginName, mimeType, activeX, axDetect) {
		this.plugins[p] = this.detectPlugin(pluginName, mimeType, activeX, axDetect);
	},

	// get the version number from the mimetype (all but IE) or ActiveX (IE)
	detectPlugin: function(pluginName, mimeType, activeX, axDetect) {

		var version = [0,0,0],
			d,
			i,
			ax;

		// Firefox, Webkit, Opera
		if (typeof(this.nav.plugins) != 'undefined' && typeof this.nav.plugins[pluginName] == 'object') {
			d = this.nav.plugins[pluginName].description;
			if (d && !(typeof this.nav.mimeTypes != 'undefined' && this.nav.mimeTypes[mimeType] && !this.nav.mimeTypes[mimeType].enabledPlugin)) {
				version = d.replace(pluginName, '').replace(/^\s+/,'').replace(/\sr/gi,'.').split('.');
				for (i=0; i<version.length; i++) {
					version[i] = parseInt(version[i], 10);
				}
			}
		// Internet Explorer / ActiveX
		} else if (typeof(window.ActiveXObject) != 'undefined') {
			try {
				ax = new ActiveXObject(activeX);
				if (ax) {
					version = axDetect(ax);
				}
			}
			catch (e) { }
		}
		return version;
	}
};

// Add Flash detection
mejs.PluginDetector.addPlugin('flash','Shockwave Flash','application/x-shockwave-flash','ShockwaveFlash.ShockwaveFlash', function(ax) {
	// adapted from SWFObject
	var version = [],
		d = ax.GetVariable("$version");
	if (d) {
		d = d.split(" ")[1].split(",");
		version = [parseInt(d[0], 10), parseInt(d[1], 10), parseInt(d[2], 10)];
	}
	return version;
});

// Add Silverlight detection
mejs.PluginDetector.addPlugin('silverlight','Silverlight Plug-In','application/x-silverlight-2','AgControl.AgControl', function (ax) {
	// Silverlight cannot report its version number to IE
	// but it does have a isVersionSupported function, so we have to loop through it to get a version number.
	// adapted from http://www.silverlightversion.com/
	var v = [0,0,0,0],
		loopMatch = function(ax, v, i, n) {
			while(ax.isVersionSupported(v[0]+ "."+ v[1] + "." + v[2] + "." + v[3])){
				v[i]+=n;
			}
			v[i] -= n;
		};
	loopMatch(ax, v, 0, 1);
	loopMatch(ax, v, 1, 1);
	loopMatch(ax, v, 2, 10000); // the third place in the version number is usually 5 digits (4.0.xxxxx)
	loopMatch(ax, v, 2, 1000);
	loopMatch(ax, v, 2, 100);
	loopMatch(ax, v, 2, 10);
	loopMatch(ax, v, 2, 1);
	loopMatch(ax, v, 3, 1);		

	return v;
});

Then it can be used with the following code:

// get the version
var version = PluginDetector.plugins['flash'];

// check for specific verison
var hasVersion = PluginDetector.hasPluginVersion('flash', [9,0,125]);