O'Reilly Network Script Library -- Javascript
Plug-in Detection
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Language: JavaScript |
The script makes it easy to check for the existence of 5 commonly-used plug-ins: Apple's QuickTime, Macromedia's Flash and Shockwave for Director, Real Networks' RealPlayer, and Microsoft's Windows Media Player.
The script can also be used to redirect the browser to a new page if a given plug-in is (or is not) found.
Finally, the script reports whether detection is or is not possible.
Note that for some plug-ins, such as Flash and QuickTime, it is possible to check not only for the plug-in's existence, but for a specific version of the plug-in. However, version information is detected with greater ease and reliability from within a plug-in file. Further, that level of detail would add significantly to the size and complexity of this script. For these reasons, version detection is not included in this script.
See the article, Plug-in Detection with JavaScript for a full discussion of this script. This script originally appeared on Apple Internet Developer site.
Instructions
Copy the contents of the script between the
<HEAD> and </HEAD> tags in your document. (Since we're using multiple <SCRIPT> blocks, it would require two separate .js files and wouldn't work for Netscape 3, so it makes more sense to just include the script in your document.)
To check for a given plug-in, simply call one of the following functions, which return a value of either true (if the plug-in is there) or false (if the plug-in is not there or could not be detected):
detectQuickTime()detectFlash()detectDirector()detectWindowsMedia()detectReal()
For example, to check for the existence of the QuickTime plug-in, you could do the following:
var quickTimeIsInstalled = detectQuickTime();
if(quickTimeIsInstalled)
alert('You have the QuickTime plug-in.');Once you know if the plug-in is installed, there are several things you can do:
You can use JavaScript to write out a message stating the plug-in wasn't found. You could also use JavaScript to write out the
<OBJECT>and/or<EMBED>tags that pull the plug-in content if the plug-in was found).You can put the detection code in a frameset and use JavaScript to write out different frame sources depending on whether or not the plug-in was found.
Finally, you can use JavaScript to redirect the browser to a new page depending on whether or not the plug-in was found. The script makes it easy to do this redirection:
- If you pass the function a URL, it will redirect to that URL if the plug-in is not found:
detectQuickTime('non_plugin_page.html'); - If, instead, you want to redirect if the plug-in is found, pass the function both a URL and the word
true:detectQuickTime('plugin_found_page.html', true)
- If you pass the function a URL, it will redirect to that URL if the plug-in is not found:
Finally, if you simply want to find out if detection is possible at all, do the following:
var ableToDetect = canDetectPlugins();
if(ableToDetect)
alert('It is possible to check for plug-ins.');
