Although never officially a part of any HTML specification,
the <<embed>> tag is most often used to include
embedded objects for Netscape and Internet Explorer. A Macromedia Flash file
might be embedded as follows:
<<embed id="demo" name="demo" src="http://www.javascriptref.com/examples/ch18/flash.swf" width="318" height="252" play="true" loop="false" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" swliveconnect="true">><</embed>>
The most important attributes of the <<embed>> tag are src,
which gives the URL of the embedded object, and pluginspage,
which indicates to the browser where the required plug-in is to be found if it
is not installed in the browser. Plug-in vendors typically make available the
embedding syntax, so check their site for the value of pluginspage.
Recall that applets embedded with <<object>> tags are passed initial
parameters in <<param>> tags. The syntax of
<<embed>> is different in that initial parameters
are passed using attributes of the element itself. For instance, in the
preceding example the play attribute tells the plug-in to
immediately begin playing the specified file.
The <<object>> element is the
newer, official way to include embedded objects of any kind in your pages.
However, <<object>> is not supported in Netscape
browsers prior to version 4, and <<embed>>
continues to be supported by new browsers. So it is unlikely that <<object>> will completely supplant <<embed>> any time in the near future.