At work, we came across this issue with Adobe Flash CS4 that had to do with username and password prompts. You might recall this. You've added your swf to a live site, then you are prompted by a username and password box. Annoying right?

This kind of prompt often looks like the browser is asking for site login credentials, but it’s really a symptom that something about the exported asset (or how it was re-uploaded/served) is being treated differently than expected.

What usually triggers this issue

In practice, we saw it happen after:

• exporting a SWF, then re-exporting multiple times

• uploading from different machines/accounts

• changes in Flash versions (CS4 vs CS5)

• a mismatch between the publish settings and the environment it was uploaded into

The simple fix

Funnily enough, the solution is quite simple:

SOLUTION: re-publish your swf and re-upload

If that fails, re-publish your swf from another computer.

A quick sanity checklist (before you lose an hour)

If you’re stuck in a loop, it can help to:

• confirm you’re uploading the latest exported file (no old cached version)

• delete the old SWF on the server first, then upload the new one

• test in a different browser (to rule out local caching)

• confirm the page embedding code is pointing to the correct SWF filename/path

Update (SEP 2011)

Update (SEP 2011): It looks like we had people using different versions of Flash. Some were using CS4, while others were using CS5. Publishing from CS4 seemed to do the job.

If you’re collaborating on a team, keeping everyone aligned on the same Flash version (and publish settings) can save a lot of “it works on my machine” confusion.