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9Dec/090

Flash Testing with FlashSwitcher

While working on launching a new site I suddenly realized that I didn't have a vm or extra compy around without flash installed. Yes I could have just changed the swfobject params to a higher version of flash to see what my error message would look like, but I was wondering if there were any good plugins or 'quick-fix' tools to use for testing various versions of flash on a page. That's how I stumbled onto Sephiroth's FlashSwitcher plugin for firefox.

Flash Switcher in Firefox Tray

Flash Switcher in Firefox Tray - (with my other tools ;) )

The plugin  is fairly huge (14mb) but it makes sense as he's cramming 3 version of flash for 3 different operating systems in it.  What it does is puts a little flash logo in the bottom right of your window. When left-clicked it shows you other versions of flash that you can test with (9.0 r124, 8.0 r24, or 7.0 r63).  If you click on one, it will remove the currently installed version of flash and install the one you clicked on.  IMPORTANT! before you click on one of the flash versions in the menu, use the sub-menu to "Save as..." your current version or it will be removed and you'll have to go download it and install it again.  Once you've "Saved as..." it will keep your current version and list it with the others.

Flash Switcher with sub-menu active

Flash Switcher with sub-menu active

Hopefully this will be useful to those of you playing with various versions of flash, or if you want to do a test for users without flash (just click remove to uninstall flash from your browser).

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