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hasn't anyone spotted any security issues with this?

The player is still downloading stuff even when the browser is pointing to a new page? why is this? Surely the 6 player and whatever its doing should be terminated once the window is closed or a new url is loaded. Why does it do anything in the background like this? does this also mean that unscrupulous developers can stream content to my computer even if I close the browser window.

If I want to stop stuff downloading, I kill the browser window, click stop etc, macromedia is now telling us that we have less control over whats coming down the pipes to us?

So, anyone can get together a few huge files, stick them in their footer and lock up every computer with the F6 player.

Sorry but a bug fix or a new player is not good enough, I believe the flash community should be told why this is happening and why the idea was conceived in the first place. There is a reason why this was changed from 4 and 5 isn't there?

I await MM's response, thanks.

Yes are I agree that there are certain issues that this highlights. But I doubt we'll ever get a straight answer. Perhaps the answer could do more harm to Flash than good

hmm, generator used a 'tickler' so that macromedia had a record of it being used

mx replaces generator

every mx movie uses a 'tickler' ?

problem with loadmovie, streaming etc?

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Originally posted by MikeChambers
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).

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Thanks, Mike. That's good enough for me. Let us know if there is anything we can do to help out.

-scott
http://www.scottmanning.com/

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Originally posted by RazoRmedia

Sorry but a bug fix or a new player is not good enough, I believe the flash community should be told why this is happening and why the idea was conceived in the first place. There is a reason why this was changed from 4 and 5 isn't there?

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its a bug. if it is something that we did intentionally we wouldn't be fixing it.

mike chambers

[email protected]

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Originally posted by RazoRmedia
hmm, generator used a 'tickler' so that macromedia had a record of it being used

mx replaces generator

every mx movie uses a 'tickler' ?

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that is a creative line of reasoning, but it is not correct. Macromedia Flash MX movies do not report to Macromedia (with all of the millions of flash movies on the internet, we couldn't afford the bandwidth if they did).

mike chambers

[email protected]
[Edited by MikeChambers on 04-03-2002 at 10:30 AM]

cheers for your response. Is it the way the 6 player has been coded differently?

I apologise if my posts come across as a bit strong, I have had a hard time convincing my clients to use flash and to upgrade their players. Something like this is a major setback to us.

Thanks for keeping us informed

Thanks for getting back to us, we were hardly nice :(

what about the streaming of mp3..i tested one on the server i uploaded the 3 mb mp3 over the server then use the streaming option to true.

so as soon as i open up the swf it start to play...play really quite good..now thinngs come in picture i close the browser it still playing..upto some time..as written in the manual come with the flash MX that for streaming it using a virtual memory rather then some buffering on user end hdd.

so now if its using a virtual memory ..then how much for streaming ??? that havent specify in the documentation.

I have one more query..what about the MACROMEDIA FLASH MX UI COMPONENTS SET 2..NO DOCUMENTATION still on macromedia site but having the documentation link of the NEO BETA section of the COLDFUSION in betaprograms.

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Originally posted by RazoRmedia
cheers for your response. Is it the way the 6 player has been coded differently?

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to be honest, i don't know right now, but it could have happened due to player optimizations, or new features added, etc...

btw, i have been having some problems posting to the forums, so if you don't hear a response from me on something, feel free to email me directly.

mike chambers

[email protected]

[Edited by MikeChambers on 04-03-2002 at 11:35 AM]

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Originally posted by Ed_Mack
Thanks for getting back to us, we were hardly nice :(

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no problem. i completly understand. you had a problem, and then got a sarcastic remark from me (it wasn't meant to be sarcastic, but it sure comes off as sarcastic).

i usually catch these issues pretty fast, but sometimes it is difficult to distinquish between a bug, and someone not understanding how something should work (and thus thinking it is a bug).

thanks to everyone for helping flesh out the issue.

mike chambers

[email protected]

Just looked at a site I made recently in Flash 5: the main movie PREloads 4 gallery swf's, so they're ready to view if the visitor has completed browsing other sections of the site. But now with the Flash 6 player in combination with a slow connection things go wrong. (I have made 2 versions, broadband and smallband, but 60% of the users choose the smallband so have slow internet connection!)

If the swf didn''t load completely before viewing, you have to wait until all of them are loaded. With the Flash 5 player, you could choose another gallery swf and that one was loaded immediatly. No one have to sit back and wait (sort of like the MP3 example at the begin of this tread) what results in not seeing my gallery. ;(

Hope you fix this soon Macromedia!

i found a way to explain it to one of my new customers this morning:
i made him believe that our scripts are not ready
(in this case streaming video, 25 files (6GB), switching between the streams makes a WIN machine totally unusable, but we can show it on our mac´s). the other way, to say its a flash bug, would lead to big discussions and scratching the Flash image will be bad on the long run.

but what should i do with the mails (23 today (maybe) about this problem) and the two calls of old customers with new problems they never had before (one of them thought my preloader script has a bug).
i had no other idea than explaining the truth.

has anybody a way to explain it (nearly) without a damage for flash?

i´m glad for the answer by mike chambers. it´s absolutely ok for me.
(those of us with absolute bugless scripts should through the first stone (jesus (maybe)))

again, has anybody a good explanation? especially for our old clients?

michel

I've just been saying that like any new software, there are bugs that creep up here and there this is just a bug. It will be fixed temporarily, but until it is fixed you can find the older Flash player at macromedia's web site.

All softeware has bugs - the more line of code you have in an application, the more likelyt it is that the application will have a bug. Even if 99.99% of the lines of code in windows XP- for example - were good, that still means that there are 1000+ lines of faulty code -- it's just the nature of the business.

my big clients are in germany and most of their customers are germans (they never accept cookies, their security level is extremely high, they leave the town when there´s a .exe attachment in the mail ... ).

if they smell a problem with the flash-player, i´ve a problem for years. so my idea was to say »it´s my fault« and they would think of an artist which could (and should) never be perfect.


depends on the MM guy´s, for 2 weeks this seems to be the best way, after two month i´ve to leave the country. hmm. maybe i should speak with my wife and children ;-)

michel

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Originally posted by oldnewbie
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?

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There are a few Flash software developers like myself who monitor this list. We are aware of the potential issue and we're investigating.

JV

mike, a question/suggestion. is there any kind of version control possible in the player? for example with realplayer, windows media player, other types of software, you get a message "a new version of X is now available. do you want do download it?"

i'm just concerned with the amount of checking we will have to do if there are various, widely differing players out there. ie, platform, os, os version, browser, browser version, which flash player (3/4/5/6), now which version of flash player. if somehow users could be prompted to upgrade, it would help everyone involved.

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Originally posted by bit-101


i'm just concerned with the amount of checking we will have to do if there are various, widely differing players out there. ie, platform, os, os version, browser, browser version, which flash player (3/4/5/6), now which version of flash player. if somehow users could be prompted to upgrade, it would help everyone involved.

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the version required is displayed in the HTML that displays the SWF. If the player is less than this version then they will be prompted to automatically download the new version.

the code that comes with flash mx, is 6.0.0.0. you will just need to change this to 6.0.25.0 (or whatever number the new version is).

mike chambers

[email protected]

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Originally posted by MikeChambers

Quote:

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Originally posted by bit-101


i'm just concerned with the amount of checking we will have to do if there are various, widely differing players out there. ie, platform, os, os version, browser, browser version, which flash player (3/4/5/6), now which version of flash player. if somehow users could be prompted to upgrade, it would help everyone involved.

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the version required is displayed in the HTML that displays the SWF. If the player is less than this version then they will be prompted to automatically download the new version.

the code that comes with flash mx, is 6.0.0.0. you will just need to change this to 6.0.25.0 (or whatever number the new version is).

mike chambers

[email protected]

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How will we know when the bug has been fixed, and when we can download the fixed version of Flash Player 6?

Flip.

Mike Chambers and everyone else, just wanted to let you guys know that there is a new article posted on Actionscript.com stating that Macromedia is taking care of the bug.

-scott
http://www.scottmanning.com/

Quote:

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How will we know when the bug has been fixed, and when we can download the fixed version of Flash Player 6?

Flip.

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I will post here as soon as the new player is avaliable (as well as all of the other community lists / forums).

mike chambers

[email protected]

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Originally posted by C4_Tom
Destroying the sound object sounds like a good idea. How's that done?

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looooool

hmm. I guess we all now have to detect THAT player version & code to deal with it.

huh. How many are out there?

Glad to hear work is on the way to fix the problem. Good thing people noticed the bug early on, this would have evolved into a huge issue if not.

Changing the version number in the HTML sounds like a simple solution to me. Since the player has only been out for a two weeks or so, my guess is that a very negligeable amount of people have this version of the player installed.

I don't think there will really be a version conflict ala XML.ignoreWhitespace. If Macromedia updates the HTML templates in the software as soon as they update the player, then I think the problem will fade away in a matter of a month or so.

I'd just like to say to people who are persisting in blaming Macromedia for the issue at hand that the important thing is that the bug will be fixed. There's no point in mindlessly giving into conspiracy theories and bashing.

I think that Macromedia owes C4_Tom a HUGE thank you, as do all of we. This undoubtedly would have been a serious problem if it had saturated any further.

Good job Tom!

The loadMovie glitch seems to only be a problem on Windows Operating systems running IE (The netscape plugin works fine for me). Except of course for the fact that projector files I made with the trial have the same bug.

Since this thread is getting so much attention I'd like to continue the discussion regarding loadSound. It appears to be an entirely different issue.

On Win OS with IE mp3's loaded with loadSound continue to load when changing urls. On Netscape the download stops when changing urls. However as long as the swf requesting the mp3 is running the download will continue on both browsers. There seems to be no way of effectively stopping an mp3 download. There is a loadSound, but no unloadSound command.

Using the new streaming mp3 mode all that can be done to the sound in terms of controlling playback is stopping it. The loadSound replaces the sound object play commend when streaming is true. If you stop a loaded mp3 with streaming set to true the sound stops, but the download continues. Once stopped there is no way reactivate the sound although the file stored in the sound object. No offsets. To start play again the mp3 has to be reloaded and start from the beginning.

I've attempted to stop the download by placing the sound object inside of blank MCs, duplicated MC's, and levels then unloading. The only time I was able to stop the download was by unloading level0 on Netscape. Interestingly if you unload the parent of the sound object without stopping the sound it will continue to play without a way to stop it.

I'm curious if anyone on a Mac is finding the same issues with loadSound and streaming set to true. Does the download stop when you stop the sound object?

Without and unloadSound command the user is forced to listen to the entire mp3. Of course you can stop playback, but how do you stop the download?

An interesting side note. The domain security updates for loadMovie don't seem to have any effect on loadSound. You can load an mp3 from anywhere on the net and stream it if your bandwidth is enough.

No problem guys, assuming that this is fixed soon then hopefully any major problems have been avoided.

I think the issue with the loadSound command is the same bug as the loadMovie. When that's fixed to stop the download I expect we can just use mySound.loadSound("").
People keep mentioning destroying the object but as far as I'm aware there's no way to do this in Flash, you can only replace it (unless you unload the parent). I don't think there's any flush command either.
PixelAddict and co, do you know of way to do it?

The fact that loadMovie works just fine on Netscape for me and loadSound doesn't makes me wonder if its a different issue alltogether. That's why I'm curious if Mac users notice it.

I suspect it's all part of the same issue, it seems to be quite inconsistant in general. The loadMovie bug does effect some Macs, but not all.

Quote:

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Originally posted by C4_Tom
People keep mentioning destroying the object but as far as I'm aware there's no way to do this in Flash, you can only replace it (unless you unload the parent).

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You can 'destroy' variables (objects) by using the delete command:

delete mySoundObj;

for example. It reclaims the memory that a variable was using. As far as I know, that has no effect on the download issue though.

- n.

Quote:

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Originally posted by cre8ive
The fact that loadMovie works just fine on Netscape for me and loadSound doesn't makes me wonder if its a different issue alltogether. That's why I'm curious if Mac users notice it.

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I use loadMovie to load swf's containing streaming mp3's. I can verify that the flash 6 plug-in works just fine in Netscape Communicator 4.6 on PC (Win98). When I test loading the same streaming mp3's in Internet Explorer 5 the 'streaming bug' kicks in and the mp3's keep on loading even after I leave the site.

I do still use Flash 5 though, so I haven't used loadSound at all.

Even after it's been fixed, this does create possible issues for people still creating and using flash 5 content.

For new stuff, I guess there's a workaround possibly checking the minor version number of the player at the start of the movie and if it's in the affected range, redirecting to the new player download page.

But for the long-complete v5 movies which screw up in the current player, I think site admins will recieving complaints from a minority of users (which can still be a lot of people at high-traffic sites) at least for the next few months - and the volume of future complaints will increase for every day macromedia has this flawed player available for download.

Hope they sort it quickly.

I'm hoping that the player will autoupdate itself, assuming that the fix is pretty small. If not there could certainly be a few problems

This is not exactly on the topic but:

There have been a number of developers (and others) who have been encouraging of and excited about MM's recent Flash MX strategy of "replacing" HTML as a content-delivery standard.

(That's *some* developers. Maybe not *you*).

MM's non-response on this issue is typical of them--I've seen this kind of thing since starting with Director back in '95.

This kind of corporate behavior points out the dangers of relying on one, closed platform. Is this really the kind of company that we want to entrust to develop a new kind of content delivery standard, or an application development tool?

The comment somewhere that this bug essentially renders all "Skip Intro" buttons useless should be hammered into MM's head: they are _counting_ on increased understanding and acceptance of Accesibility and Usability Standards--this bug craps all over those in a big way.

Quote:

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Originally posted by C4_Tom
I'm hoping that the player will autoupdate itself, assuming that the fix is pretty small. ....

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Ditto - that would be ideal. probly should make it a formal request.

Quote:

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Originally posted by heyotwell
This kind of corporate behavior points out the dangers of relying on one, closed platform.

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Interesting thoughts. There is actually a thread in the Boardroom right now called HTML vs. Flash that I think you might be interested in.

-scott
http://www.scottmanning.com/

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Originally posted by pmineault
I'd just like to say to people who are persisting in blaming Macromedia for the issue at hand that the important thing is that the bug will be fixed. There's no point in mindlessly giving into conspiracy theories and bashing.

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I think the "bashing" stopped once we got a word from Macromedia. The "mindless conspiracy theory" will probably be around for awhile because of how the situation was handled at first. You just can't get around it.

I think the problem lies in what another member just stated:

Its hard for developers to buy into the "one-platform" mentality, when things like this happen.

Flash is good for a lot of things; but not everything.

-scott
http://www.scottmanning.com/

well, it made The Register:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/24707.html

Nice to see that this is being given the attention it deserves. As long as people realise that this isn't a problem with Flash itself and that it is still a very good developement tool.
My concern is that if this goes too mainstream then it could get blown up out of proportion and ending up scaring people away from Flash. Most people won't understand that the technical side of this bug, and will just associate Flash with clogging up bandwidth.
Just have to see what happens now.

HTML might have a standard but when you look at the nightmare of widely differing browser implementations we have all had to live with and code around this is not so bad. Macromedia is responding. We had to live with wildly changing and conflicting browser versions for years and every time the much awaited new versions would come out only to introduce a fresh set of problems to be accomodated.