Comments on: Why can't they fix the Flash/Firefox bug?

When open-source and traditional software development collide, the result is not good.

[tibleyard]

I.ve also experince same problem with Firefox!

[Lerianis]

This isn't a bug with Firefox. Frankly, I run Firefox 3.0, Minefield (the tester version of Firefox), etc..... I have never had a problem with playing ANY flash videos. To be honest, I don't think there really IS a problem: I think some people's Flash Players are getting corrupted, not re-installing correctly, and everyone blames it on FIrefox and Flash Player when the real issue is that they need to do some registry diving on their system to find out what in the world is causing the problem.

[johnsmith2008]

Maybe they could all switch to Silverlight if Adobe is not willing to fix its bugs...

[Lerianis]

Silverlight has a few bugs as well, johnsmith2008. Really, I had someone who had this problem.... I told him to totally uninstall Firefox 2 or 3 (whatever he had), re-install it, and then re-install Flash Player 9... Boom! Problem solved. So I think the problem is something in Firefox is getting corrupted or something in Flash Player 9 is getting corrupted, and that is the problem.
To be honest.... on Firefox 2, I had this problem. It turned out that the Flash Player plugin and some of it's registry entries had gotten corrupted. Once I manually removed them (removing EVERY SINGLE REFERENCE to Flash Player in both IE and Firefox from the registry) and then re-installed Flash Player.... the problem was fixed.
I also had the problem creep up on another person's PC, and I installed No-Script to fix the problem. The problem was that on the site where he was trying to watch a flash video, the page was coded wrong and had an erroneous string of .html that Firefox and Flash Player weren't liking, but that IE just ignored.

[badasscat]

Except that Silverlight is at least as bad, in that it's slow and choppy even on a fast computer. It also does not deal well at all with fragmented memory (as anyone who's had their browser running longer than 5 minutes has), which is not a problem with Flash.

[adkiller2k7]

NO! Silverlight doesnt work with some PC's, it says its incompatible with my processor, and it also says its incompatible with IE THATS MESSED UP!

[stimul8d]

"We hit a wall when it's a closed-source solution".

I'm usually a fan of Mozilla but that answer is complete BS. There are millions of developers debugging around closed source solutions every day,.. i'm one of them. It's the reality of software development and not an excuse for ignoring a serious bug. BOTH Mozilla AND Adobe need to consider this a critical issue but Mozilla have much more to lose since there's no problem with Flash 9 and IE. They need to get over themselves and stop blaming closed-sourcedness. Most commercial software is closed source and for good, solid business reasons.

"If both companies had closed philosophies then their engineers could swear each other to the secrecy, swap source code, and together fix the issue".

Never gonna happen,..even companies which rely on each others support will not do this. I don't care how moral these companies want us to believe they are, it would be like "Attack of the Clones" within weeks!

[Mike_Beltzner]

Nobody said we were ignoring the situation, we just said that we weren't able to reproduce it, and so we can't really debug it. Further, without being able to look at the source code, we don't know where things might be going wrong or wonky.

Further, nobody blamed closed-sourcedness; I merely mentioned that if Flash was open source, we would be able to look deeper into the issue ourselves without having to find a snapshot of a system that's experiencing the problem.

[Lerianis]

Guys, this is not a problem with Adobe Flash Player or Firefox. There is something that keeps on scrambling the entries for Flash Player for Firefox in the registry and also corrupts the files for Flash Player on your hard drive. I am really beginning to think that there is some sort of malware out and about that is causing this problem.
I experienced this problem on Firefox 2 myself for awhile. Then, I totally uninstalled and re-installed Firefox 2, not even saving anything in my profile but my bookmarks and manually deleting my profile.... that solved the problem instantly in one case. When the same problem cropped up a few months later, I uninstalled and re-installed Flash Player.... again, that solved the problem.

[swathingscientist]

I'm having the same sort of issues all over the Net with Flash video.Have Flash Player 9 but also have Flash 10 for IE and Flash 10 for all other browsers.Still get told to "Go here" to get flash.It's beginning to give me a complex.I would like to see everybody on the same page,stop messing with my enjoyment.Your own page here on CNET identified me instantly as having Flash 10.
My thanks

[Lerianis]

Yeah, that's a problem. Really, pages shouldn't be doing that 'Flash check' anymore considering that most people are already on Flash Player 8 or higher now. I get tired of seeing that message on numerous websites, which won't let the things work because of my having a higher version of Flash installed than the person who made the page allowed.

[gagahput3ra]

I experienced the same issue but i can solve it by restarting Firefox. And it didn't happen very often, i have to say.

[basraw]

Yes - restart firefox with OUT saved sessions or tabs.

That'll fix it until it happens again.

[onlyauser]

I love most all things Adobe, however, it appears that Adobe is not responding effectively or very strategically against the burgeoning Silverlight.

This underestimation of the competition and the fact that Adobe not doing everything possible FAST to correct a problem with Flash in the most important open application is going to cost Adobe in many ways.

[twistyr]

There's a similar problem with FF3 & embedded Windows Media vids. The video floats off halfway across the page, or the player controls vanish, or the vid is replaced by black rectangle. Very modern art but doesn't help my viewers. We've been talking about switching to Flash just to resolve this problem but reading this article makes me think I'd better just tell everyone to roll back to FF2.

Lerianis, re your registry changes - I've read forum posts citing a Windows Security update (#896688) which changes registry info in such a way that some ActiveX components no longer display properly on webpages.

I thought this might be the cause of the FF/WMP issues but I can't really ask annoyed end users to go to the bother of checking what their latest security update was to confirm this, and it's a bit tenuous anyway.

There are a number of posts complaining that WMV has vanished since upgrading to FF3 - this one's on the Mozilla forum, and there isn't even an official response: http://support.mozilla.com/tiki-view_forum_thread.php?locale=tr&comments_parentId=135328&forumId=1

[Lerianis]

WMV hasn't vanished in FIrefox 3. You have to install a plugin to allow Firefox 3 to play WMV streams in Firefox 3, and it's right on the 'known bugs' page for Firefox 3. Really, I think that Mozilla should put a link to the page with that installer on the main Firefox 3 download page.

[Penguinisto]

FF3 + Flash works just fine here... but then again, I don't use Windows (just Mac and Linux), so your mileage may vary.

[bill dates]

so it works for you. both FF3 and Flash 9? so what's the common denominator that wasn't in the combination that made it work for you and not for the other windows user?

[alex_mayorga]

An excellent moment to plug http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/ =) I personally block most if not all Flash content anyway and file a report to the webmaster whenever I find a Flash only site. The real bug here is the sites version detection scripts that are too foolish to not realize that 10 > 8.

[Mike_Beltzner]

The Windows Media Player plugin issue is documented here: http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Using+the+Windows+Media+Player+plugin+with+Firefox (Microsoft stopped shipping the plugin with certain operating system releases)

[Renegade Knight]

The Flash guys are the ones on the hook to make their product work with the dominant browsers if they want to keep their market share.

Personally I don't like that I need to install Flash to begin with. Flash seems bloated.

[Lerianis]

Bloated? It's only 20MB's installed, so how is that bloated? Man, some people just don't want to give up ANY space on their hard drive to anything.

[alexboyer]

Flash player is open source.... Kudos to Mozilla for the misdirection. It's surprising that they'd try it in the age of Google though...

http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/200804/050108AdobeOSP.html

[fun2program8]

No, it's not open. The specifications for the SWF format are opened up, but the player that uses these is still locked up tight.

[alexboyer]

Actually it looks like they haven't completed that yet...

[jcwestbrook]

I had this issue when first upgrading to Firefox 3 - and I just installed flash 10 and it went away. I've never had trouble with the Cnet website - or any other - prompting me to install another version.

[Matthew Saroff]

Just a nit pick, "An Adobe spokesperson, who asked not to be named," is not a spokesman. He is an anonymous source.

Spokesmen speak on the record. If they go off the record, they are no longer spokesmen.

[MatthewFabb]

John Dowdell from Adobe points out, the reason the bug has not been fixed is because users are not providing enough information to let Adobe Flash engineers know how the bug is created, so that they can reproduce it:
http://blogs.adobe.com/jd/2008/08/firefox_video_dropouts.html

If Adobe can't reproduce it on demand, they really can't fix it because it's otherwise just a shot in the dark on what's causing it and what needs to be done to remove the issue.

I've seen the bug happen myself a couple of times (Windows XP, Firefox 3, Flash Player 9.0.124) but it has not happened very often and is very random in nature.

[Lerianis]

Well, it's hard to give them a way to reproduce it "on demand" because it seems to be a 'it won't work one second, then it will work the next second!" kind of thing.... there is no way to give them information when it is a crapshoot whether the thing in question will not work on a regular basis.

[Joeb912]

I have the problem in IE7 and despite attempting one of the fixes on Microsoft's website, I've never gotten Flash 9 to work. If I have to see a website using Flash, I switch to Firefox. How ironic.

[Lerianis]

Well, that's strange..... you are the first person I have heard of saying that they have this problem in IE7, as far as I can remember. Have you tried uninstalling and re-installing Flash Player 9? If you are on Vista.... this problem shouldn't have crept up, I haven't had anyone else say that they have had that problem on that operating system.

[Joeb912]

I'm the only one who's read these blogs that has the problem with IE7. I have uninstalled, reinstalled, patched, run registry fixes, Microsoft fixes, etc. and Flash 9 absolutely doesn't work. I have XP SP3.

[revtarded]

firefox 3 + winxp sp3 and all works well with flash9. never had even a hiccup and didnt realize this was an issue until i read this story. because of that, i'll buy the errant plug-in combination excuse or the embedded malware excuse since i have no additional plugins installed in firefox other than standard fare media plugins like flash.

[buck1112]

I have had a glitch with my flash 9 plugin, although I'm not certain of the cause. The profile in Firefox 3.0.7 became corrupted when my bookmarks reached a certain size. I exported them all and only retained the most recent 1/3 or so, and now there are no problems. I tested this on several different profiles in Firefox 3.0.7, and when I reimported the full size bookmark to a previously working profile, the Flash plugin would cease to work, for some reason.
You can run multiple profiles of the same FF version, side by side - this page has some good tips:
http://the-edmeister.home.comcast.net/~the-edmeister/

This page shows you how to do the batch file version of running multiple profiles:
http://the-edmeister.home.comcast.net/~the-edmeister//advice-html/simul-profiles_batch-file.html

That's my 2 cents. :-)