‘ESPN FLASH detection system’ meets Flash 0

Even in the classy company of bad version detection scripts we've met since we started testing Opera 10, this Flash detection approach stands out. That script goes to great effort to require an update every.single.time Adobe releases another Flash version.

It starts with a bold claim to be the ESPN "Flash detection system", no less:

// Author: Danny Mavromatis
// Version: 2.07.0
// Created: 10/29/2001
// Updated: 3/6/2006
// ESPN.com FLASH detection system
	var f2 = false;
	var f3 = false;
	var f4 = false;
	var f5 = false;
	var f6 = false;
	var f7 = false;
	var f8 = false;
	var f9 = false;

Look at all those variables. What might they be used for? Read on:

var fD = navigator.plugins["Shockwave Flash" + isVersion2].description;
var fV = parseInt(fD.charAt(fD.indexOf(".") - 1));

So, first it extracts one single letter that precedes a dot in the plugin's description of itself. This is presumably the plugin's major version number, you know the 8 in "8.0", the 9 in "9.0", and, um, the 0 in "10.0". Then:

f2 = fV == 2;
f3 = fV == 3;
f4 = fV == 4;
f5 = fV == 5;
f6 = fV == 6;
f7 = fV == 7;
f8 = fV == 8;
f9 = fV == 9;

..it just sets the corresponding "f"-variable to true. If the major version was 8, f8 will be true and so on. A great way to make sure the code will require maintenance – new variables for each new version. And then comes the real gem:

for (var i = 2; i <= mV; i++) {
if (eval("f" + i) == true) aV = i;
}
// alert("version detected: " + aV);

[/code]

Let's see, we just had a variable fV which contained Flash's major version number (or at least its least significant digit) – but this script has severe amnesia. What was that number again? Better use a loop and 8 eval() calls to check the value of that variable. You never know, do you?

Now, dear readers – Mr. Mavromatis clearly needs some help with this code. Obviously, complexity and maintenance requirements are among his design goals. The natural question is whether there are good, non-obvious ways this script could be improved to be more complex and require even more maintenance? Suggestions welcome in comments.

Update: Danny Mavromatis responded in comments and – though he no longer works on the ESPN site – has made sure that the page where we found this problem has been updated. Kudos to Mr. Mavromatis for his quick response and sense of responsibility. I wish more web developers would act this way!

No more personal attacks, please!