"Since today this property completely slipped by without being noticed (by me at least):
System.capabilities.playerType
A friend of mine asked me if i knew a way of telling from where the swf is being run (standalone, browser… etc). I didn’t… and where do you go first when you don’t know the answer? … Help docs, of course 
And there it was: System.capabilities.playerType. Just the thing i needed. It is a property (of type string) that indicates the type of the player. It can return the value of “StandAlone” if the swf is being run in a standalone player, “External” if the swf is run from the FlashIDE, “PluigIn” if its run from within a browser (of Netscape type) and “ActiveX” if its run from within IE.
Cool. I learned something new today. :)"
so did you?
(via http://www.klaustrofobik.org/blog/archives/000236.html )
