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I am doing some testing for a very large website, created many different developers. Is there a way to tell if the website is using and/or has loaded the flash ? If the page is using flash is there a way to tell what part of the page/code trigger the flash plugin to load in the browser/page?

Update: I will be a little bit clearer. When I go to the login page for my web page using for and I open the Chrome Task Manager I don't see any plugins listed as running. When I login and land on the homepage I now see the Chrome has loaded the process "Plug-in: Shockwave Flash". Looking at the Network tab in the developer tools I do not see any Flash (swf) files being downloaded. If I stay on the page long enough Chrome will remove the "Plug-in: Shockwave Flash" process. Why is Chrome loading this plugin when the page is not using it?

Eric
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    Can you just search the entire website directory for `*.swf`? – Marty Mar 26 '12 at 01:23
  • @MartyWallace In my specific case there was a flash file that was loaded by default on the page and it was changed to load based on a user action. When I tested the change I no-longer saw any .swf files in the waterfall chart, but I did see that google chrome on the mac started the flash plug-in sub-process. I really wanted to figure out why this was happening because it was not happening on all pages. – Eric Mar 26 '12 at 16:07
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    This question might have not received attention because it is vague and indecipherable, don't you think? – Pranav Hosangadi Apr 06 '12 at 05:44
  • @wvxvw Using a Proxy in this case will not work because I am not seeing any flash content being downloaded using Chromes Network tab in the developer tools. – Eric Apr 10 '12 at 02:41

4 Answers4

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To check if website is using Flash, you need to check for either embed tag or object tag, for embed tag you can see the application type which should be shockwave , and for object you can see the CLSID value which is same on windows for sure.

to see if Flash plugin has loaded. i am not sure how to do that.. but to see if Flash file is loaded from network you can listen to 'readyState' event of the tag and wait till it becomes 4.

Kamal
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    Your answer was the closest to what helped me find the answer. In one of the JavaScript files it was appending an Object element to the end of the body element. This was not triggering the flash plugin to load because it did not make any calls to load a flash file. The next line of code was `objectElement.GetVariable("$version");` which is used to get the version of flash installed on the machine. This was triggering the call to load the flash plugin. I did not see this when I did a view source because the JavaScript code would remove the object from the dom after it get the version. – Eric Apr 11 '12 at 02:50
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    In Chrome if you want to see if the flash plug-in is loaded you can use the following steps. 1) Open Chrome 2) Click the wrench in the upper right hand corner 3) go to tools 4) Select task manager. 5) There will be an entry for "Plug-in: Shockwave Flash". It will only be there if flash has been used at some point durring the current browser session (on any one of the tabs/windows). These steps verified on Mac and Chrome 18. – Eric Apr 11 '12 at 02:51
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One of the best ways to see the generated html code is using the "Web Developers Toolbar" in firefox or chrome (it's a plugin). This way you can see if there is a object included, and possibly see if it is a .swf or if it says flash content. https://chrispederick.com/work/web-developer/

Eric
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Collin Kleine
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Are you looking for how to detect at the client if flash is being used? If so, flash has the ability to interact with javascript. Here is a website that outlines this

https://www.permadi.com/tutorial/flashjscommand/

You could have the flash plugin set some javascript variable on startup which can be used to determine if flash is running or not.

Eric
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eltommo
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    A good idea but this will not work for 3rd party flash code which we cannot edit. – Eric Apr 08 '12 at 15:55
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Firebig for Firefox has the 'Net' tab which shows you all the HTTP requests required to load the page (which will include any flash files, and you can break down by file type to show you just flash files also, see here)

There is also flashbug, a plugin for firebug:-

https://mariani.life/projects/flashbug/

Eric
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rgvcorley
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  • flashbug has been discontinued and merged into flash firebug https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/flashfirebug/ – Eric Apr 10 '12 at 01:48