Along with the announcement of Studio 8, Macromedia also rolled out their new Flash Detection Kit. Geoff Stearns' FlashObject is still the best Flash detection out there, but the best feature of the kit is the Flash Player Express Install sample files included with it. Express install allows you to enable detection of the end user's Flash Player version, initate a player-based secure installation, and return the user to your site to view your content. Express Install requires that the user has Flash Player 6.0r65 or later installed on Mac OS or Windows.

Additionally, the code contains a useful way to prevent the caching of SWF files. It creates a variable named "cacheBuster" and assigns a random number to it. Then, when it loads the .swf movie, it appends a "?" and the cacheBuster number to the end of the URL. So everytime the loadMovie is called, the browser is tricked into thinking it is a different .swf file.

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