If your sIFR quit working … time to upgrade

Maybe you have noticed that the headlines on my site look slightly different than a normal Times New Roman font (at least if you are using a modern browser.) That is because I am using a web technique known as Scalable Inman Flash Replacement (or sIFR for short). This is, essentially, a way to substitute plain text with font-embedded flash objects to enhance their appearance. The nice thing about using sIFR is that your site remains accessible to search engines and older browsers that do not understand this technique.

I recently noticed, however, that on my new laptop Firefox didn’t show the sIFRized fonts. Since it worked fine in all my other browsers (including Firefox on my desktop unit), I assumed my local install of Firefox or the Adobe Flash player were messed up. After a few uninstalls/reinstalls, it still didn’t work. After a little investigation, I found this article that revealed the version of sIFR I originally installed on my site (2.0.4) was using a single digit to determine a browser’s Flash version/capability before replacing the text with flash objects. Guess what version of the Flash player I had installed on my new laptop? That would be the latest, version 10 (note the two-digit version number!)

After a quick upgrade to the latest version of sIFR (including merging some modifications I made to the script and Flash files) I’m back up and running!