Calling a custom FLASH method from IE7 & IE8

Question

I am trying to call a custom method of an embedded flash like so:

var flash = navigation_get_flash_movie_object('main'); if (flash) { flash.continentOut(id); }

Which works great in Chrome ans Safari, but fails utterly in IE7 & IE8. The browsers throws an error that the object doesn't have such a method.

I am using the example from http://www.permadi.com/tutorial/flashjscommand/, and now that I've tested it, it also fails at it's testing page as well http://www.permadi.com/tutorial/flashGetObject/

Does anyone have a better way to invoke custom functions in a Flash object from Javascript?