I can't see a video when I open email on AOL 9.7, but when I open it through IE I can see it,,, why?

Question

When I open an email through AOL9.7 that has an Adobe Flash Player video in it, all I See is a black box,,,when I open the same email through Internet Explorer (when I open AOL through IE) I can see the video.  I do have the latest version of Flash Player,,, what is the problem????

Answer 1

Let me preface this by saying I'm a former AOL help desk agent; that means I helped their support people for two years before I left. There's no need for anyone who ISN'T using a dial up connection (through AOL) to have AOL software installed on their system - it takes nearly a gig of hard drive space when you include all the extra junk it installs with their updates, it uses a "two versions old (IE 8)"  scaled down version of Internet Explorer for it's browser engine, and there's NOTHING the software does that can't be accessed at aol.com - INCLUDING AOL mail.
Because it uses a "two versions old" IE, and a scaled down build at that, the odds are that the plugin you have for IE doesn't work with the AOL browser because Microsoft won't let them have the full code for it. Additionally, AOL mail is HTML mail and won't display external content unless you specifically go in and "tweak the settings" so it will. I have to explain this a few times a month to "newbie" web designers who want to use all kinds of "fancy-shmancy" styles and HTML stuff in their bulk emails. Most people won't and can't see it, so it's a waste of time to put it in there. I haven't touched AOL software or used their email since I left their employ in 2003, so I have no recolection at all of how to enable external Flash vcontent in their mail. I'd suggest contacting AOL support, but from what I know, it's far worse than when I worked there a decade ago, and it was abominable then.