How to Detect If Flash Is Installed and If Not, Display a Hidden Div That Informs the User

How can I detect if Flash is installed and if not, display a hidden div that informs the user?

Use swfobject. it replaces a div with the flash if it is installed.
see: http://code.google.com/p/swfobject/

One-liner JavaScript to detect if flash is installed

As a summary of the above comments as requested:

The following SO answer is applicable: How can I detect if Flash is installed and if not, display a hidden div that informs the user?

Especially the comments / discussion of the above question are useful. I only remember that when we have used a Flash check we had combined two checks for some reasons I cannot recall. This was prior the iPad age, nowadays I'd check against the common [x]Pads if these are among the target audience. Maybe you combine the Flash and Browser check, e.g. once you know the browser is SAFARI/iPad you know it is not supporting Flash.

Try to encapsulate the check so you can change / extend it if required (that was useful for us).

How to check with JS if flash is installed, or not?

If you’re using Flash to progressively enhance a document, please use this script to feature detect it first.

var hasFlash = ((typeof navigator.plugins != "undefined" && typeof navigator.plugins["Shockwave Flash"] == "object") || (window.ActiveXObject && (new ActiveXObject("ShockwaveFlash.ShockwaveFlash")) != false));

hasFlash will be true if Flash is available, or falsy if it isn’t.

If you already have access to the Flash element you want to use then you could just do:

var hasFlash = 'Pan' in element;

Source: https://gist.github.com/675496

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