you might get mike chmbers in a bit of trouble though :)
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you might get mike chmbers in a bit of trouble though :)
He's not called the "The Minister of No Crap" for nothin' Nice work No Crap
Yes, well done Scott, hopefully that will get their attention :)
I don't think I got Mike Chambers in trouble. If he's in any trouble, he did it himself.
Macromedia wants to push Flash into everyone's hearts and they expect us to help. They are relying on us to help push it. Well, how can we push a platform that is faulty? How can we push a company that ignores major problems in the thier own platform or belittles them?
This is ridiculous. We shouldn't have to put all of this effort into getting Macromedia to recognize and take care of this problem. We are wasting time that could spent developing and evangelizing Flash to the world.
I've added a ton more content to the article using the info you guys have posted in this thread, so hopefully everyone will understand the problem and the seriousness of it on the first read.
-scott
http://www.scottmanning.com/
i´ve searched the MM site and the board for some reaction, found nothing. what is the normal way or place MM reacts on issues like this?
i´ve tested it again on mac os X with IE5.1 and FlashPlayer 6 (r21) (because i was frightened that somebody will come and say »this is a new thing because you should use CF6 (neo) for something like that).
absolutely sure: it stops when it should stop, like the player 5 did.
so it´s definitely a bug with the WIN player. any suggestions what i should tell my customers tomorrow? about 85% of their clients use IE 5/6 and WIN os´s. has anybody experiences how MM reacted in situations like this? and how long it took?
I do agree with most everyone that mentionned staying civilized in this thread. I think Macromedia has served us quite well during the past few years and I see no reason why they will not continue to do so in the near future. I know that Macromedia will fix this.
I, like many others, just feel aggravated by Macromedia's apparent refusal to acknowledge the issue. While I am most certain that behind the curtains, Macromedia is working hard on a solution, I just wish someone at MM would give us an unequivocal response that they are indeed doing so.
And while it is not a habit of mine to childishly offer one misfortune, I do wish *certain people* hadn't unapologetically ridiculed our concerns.
[Edited by pmineault on 04-02-2002 at 04:29 PM]
really. a simple, "yes, we heard you. we are working on it at this very moment." would do wonders right now.
Well, I felt it appropriate to post this to the NTBugTraq mailing list -- and it was just allowed through.
We'll see if there is any response. If you're not a subscriber, you can read the post here:
http://www.ntbugtraq.com/default.asp...q&F=P&S=&P=971
The best thing we can tell our clients at the moment is that somehow a buggy player has got in to circulation and that we're sure it's being worked on.
As long as this is sorted out soon we should all come out of this unscathed. Just make sure that clients know it's an issue with macromedia and not us. And maybe try to downplay the bug and say that it's not a massive issue on broadband or something.
Doesn't seem to be anything else we can do at the moment :(
anybody have any idea how many Flash devlopment boards there are out in cyberspace? I see all the same people C4guys, bit101, scottManning, etc on just about every newsgroup saying the same sorts of things.
I know the people at MM are busy hardworking developers too, but there has got to be at least someone that can say whether or not they are aware of this.
Maybe Flashkit is just to small and under the radar for them to listen -- I mean -- maybe 60 posts from 30 people about this issue is not exactly a groundswell.
i wonder why no one saw this before? I wonder how many other boards are out there -- I am going to open a thread on were-here about this. Anyone know of other popular Flash developer boards?
I think we should -- just to be ****ers - start threads on every board we find with the same issue presented. It probably makes no difference, but what the heck.
On a different note - I am struck by how small this community seems -- is it just the vocal minority that is expressing themselves? or is Flash not as commonly used as I thought. -- hmm
wow -- the forum censored w a n k -- I didn't event thyink that qualified as a cuss word -- sorry about the off topic post
As far as I know here and were-here are the biggest boards around. I think there are plenty of Flash developers out there, but a lot don't use the boards. A lot also just do it in their spare time and so have no major problems if something isn't working.
I've had a look at a couple of other boards but they're nowhere near as active as this one.
I think the reason that it's only a minority that are making themselves heard is because this is a reasonably advanced topic. A lot of smaller sites will fit in one swf and so loads won't be needed. Also, there is a lot of sites that simply preload content, rather than using effective streaming.
Most people won't be too concerned by this issue until they notice that it begins to have an effect on their sites. Those of us that are having problems have got to make ourselves heard.
Starting threads around the place sounds like a good idea.
This was a very good point brought up in a similar thread at were-here:
"It might be worth bearing in mind that Flash Forward 2002 started yesterday evening and is carrying through to tomorrow around noon. My guess is that most of the key people who would address this sort of problem are at that event, so it might be another day or two before MM can formulate a response to this issue. "
FF2K2 could be the reason for no response.
Surely they leave enough people behind to deal with emergencys.
I looked at http://www.myrecords.com/mixtape/mixtape.html
and noticed that it did continue downloading also. The itcan.netmonitor download graph was showing a download of about 6kb to 9kb. Eventually it froze up where I was unable to select any song. I am using a 56k modem. Then I went to another site (HTML) and it seemed to take longer to load then normal. Is this a result of going to view a page using the flash 6 payer first or unrelated? And maybe this is unrelated, but why would is the download graph continuing to download at about 5kb when I am simply typing this message and not browsing the web?
You're right, FF2K2 could well be part of the issue. But it's pretty irresponsible for Macromedia to ALL be out this soon after a new release.
Just read over the thread in Were-Here about this issue, Bit-101 pointed out something very interesting. Every 'skip intro' button in all of flashland is completly useless.
The impact of this bug seems to be growing and growing in my mind.
jhb: This is related. Even after leaving the flash site and visiting a standard HTML site the files will continue to stream in the background.
ie if you visit a site, see that it's preloading 1MB of stuff, decide it's too long to wait and then leave to surf elsewhere. That 1MB file will continue to download and hog your bandwidth until it's either finished or you close IE
Does anyone know if there is somewhere on the MM site that you can find stats of how many people have the infected player on their system?
I say infected because it is becoming more apparent that the flash 6 player is malicious (quite unintentionally) but still malicious. If some one out there created a "virus" that does what the flash 6 player does you would find instructions on how to get rid of it on Symantic.
I am just becoming very concerned about how much longer this can go on for without it having a very serious effect on the Flash reputation.
I tried the mixtape -- pressed next about 30 times -- now I have a sustained download of 253KB/s from that guy-- great job Macromedia
Wow, so having flash 6 player does affect browsing the web if you go to a site that requires it and then decide to go to another site that does not. You will still be effected, if the site that required it was loading a large swf file?
And are you saying that if you try to load external data, (mp3's, video, swf files) that the player accumulates these files even after they are finished loading or a user tells them to stop? Or is this the issue - that a user can't tell them to stop?
Just trying to understand it. Thanks
with the same browser open, I went to buy.com -- still downloading 184KB/s -- I keep hoping this is just an illusion or some kind of snafu -- If aI had any less of a connection i would be dead in the water
jhb: Any files that are started downloading will continue downloading until they are complete or the browser is closed
I wonder if the media will pick up on this before too long, since it effects sites that have no Flash content on them.
what do you mean 196 kb/s? Are you using a dsl. I only ask because my monitor download rate averages about 5-10kb on a 56k modem. Sorry for the unrelated post here, just curious about it.
I have an OC-48 line -- its fiber -- to concentric's backbone
So basically it does affect any user, IF they go to a site that has the Flash 6 player and then go to a different site they will experience a longer load time. I am not sure if most users will connect the load time with the flash 6 player, but certainly it is something to be fixed. Perhaps MM can disable the download of the player until these issues are worked out. I think for many users they may just think the internet is running slow?
http://www.actionscript.com/archives/00000256.html
We have our first real word from a Macromedia official. Check the reply at the bottom of the article.
It seems finally someone has noticed our concern. Although the he's not particularly helpful and doesn't seem to fully understand the issue yet this is at least a start. There is hope :)
that was very nice corporate double speak in that article -- Pinged his radar -- I don't have it wired yet --
Why is it that tech support people have such a hard time understanding a problem? I am not trying to knock the guy, but the statement he made was not exactly a helpful one. I understand it's probably not a big concern to him -- he probably doesn't mess with Flash all day- and all the nuances of the program are probably not a big part of his consciousness, but don't try to sound like you know what you are talking about if you don't.
It's good to so-- that MM is aware of the problem and has decided to grace us with a response - whatever the quality.
If that guy knows about it, I am sure the developers will probably know about it -- and that makes me feel a nice warm fuzzy for Macromedai again.
I guess wiring up the core issue will be his primary action item at this juncture.
Excuse me for jumping in this thread, just had a complete readthrough... And just wondering if reverting to the Flash 5 player would temporarily solve the problem for the average user.
Guess some new features outputed through MX woudn't be available, but for the time being, would it solved this continuous streaming problem?
It would indeed solve the problem, but it's a bit of a hastle for normal users and I suspect most would be reluctant to do it.
Really Macromedia should pull the new player from the website to stop this spreading further, but I doubt they will, it would be bad publicity
And what about this new member from Macromedia...
http://board.flashkit.com/board/show...hreadid=290156
Doesn't he have anything to say about this?
I do think we need to keep things in perspective. We posted the original problem over a weekend which happened to coincide with the biggest week in Flashworld - the Flash Forward conference. It would make sense that many of the developers will be at Flash Forward as will the Macromedia Developers who would usually monitor the bug reports. I am sure Macromedia has listened and hopefully the speed we have escalated this problem will ensure its treated with the due urgency it requires.
We now have an official Macromedia response to say its being looked at - what would now be nice NOW is to have a ball park timescale for when a fix would be available presuming Macromedia have gone through their internal procedures and confirmed our findings - which they will do however they wish to word it.
How this rogue player got into live circulation though is a question mark and I think this proves one thing - the beta testers for flash need to include some narrow band streamers!
Its NOW however in all our interests to keep this thing low key and let Macromedia do their stuff and get a fix out with as little fuss as possible. Putting people off the Flash plugin is kissing our clients goodbye. There are enough anti-flash html pussies out their who would love to do some scrare mongering - lets not give them more rocks to throw at us.
Goes without saying that if we can provide any further information or resources to help Macromedia provide the fix quicker so be it - they have but to ask.
Well, guys. I closed comment posting options on the Actionscript article concerning this issue. Looks like John Dowdell from MM Support is aware of the issue and is going to be dealing with it.
That's good enough for me. I think they'll do it in a timely fashion now.
I do believe this is a serious issue and Mike Chamber's comments did not help the situation of a bunch of developers freaking out.
Soon we'll all have the chore of updating all those buggy Flash 6 Players in the world.
-scott
http://www.scottmanning.com/
alls well that ends well
That was a lively debate though.
Let's hope we did more than ping his radar and he rings some bells with the higher-ups.
Yes, you can download and install the old Flash 5 player here:
http://www.macromedia.com/support/fl...oldplayers.htm
But, it's a nasty solution for the average user. Download the player installer, find where you saved it, run it, choose the options, and then restart. Try it for yourselves.
I, too, think we should try and keep this a little quiet. Most people won't be able to associate the slowdown to the flash content. I wouldn't have if I hadn't seen this thread.
ok, sorry i haven't been back on this thread, but i have been travelling a lot the past week between toronoto and san francisco.Quote:
Originally posted by nocrapchurch
I do believe this is a serious issue and Mike Chamber's comments did not help the situation of a bunch of developers freaking out.
second, we are very aware of the issues, and our engineers are working on it.
third, i just reread my previous post in this thread, and realize how flippant it sounded. sorry about that. we take these sorts of issues very seriously, but at least on my radar, this is one that fell through because of everything going on (flashinthecan, flashforward, continued heavy traffic on all of the flash community lists).
mike chambers
[email protected]
[Edited by MikeChambers on 04-03-2002 at 03:08 AM]
Thanks Mike, that's exactly what we wanted to hear. Do you have any idea what kind of timescale it will be before a fix is released? We need something to tell our clients.
i don't have an eta right now, but i can say that we understand how important an issue this is. (after we fix it, we have to QA it to make sure it is fixed, and that the fix didn't break anything else).Quote:
Originally posted by C4_Tom
Thanks Mike, that's exactly what we wanted to hear. Do you have any idea what kind of timescale it will be before a fix is released? We need something to tell our clients.
when / if i get an eta, i will post it here.
mike chambers
[email protected]
Excellent, that's great news. Hopefully this will be resolved soon. You guys at Macromedia had us worried for a while there :)
no problem. in the future, if something like this comes up (and I obviously miss it like i did this time), please email me directly.
mike chambers
[email protected]
Righto, I'll add that email to my address book for future issues. That would certainly save time in the future