Adobe’s Buggy Flash Update

Adobe’s got a bit of a problem. And, so far, Adobe’s not showing it cares all that much.

Just before the close of 2007 Adobe released its most recent Flash Player update. That was version 9.0.115.0 and it promised a great deal of improvements on previous releases.

Meanwhile, however, it turned out the release does cause a fair amount of issues. Issues that seriously irk a number of users.

On the one hand there is a getURL() call which doesn’t work, and a bug that causes the audio on SWFs with MP3 tracks to jitter and chirp.

Both the Adobe forums as those of companies that produce related Flash output software are ablaze. A lot of people are stuck with websites that have become unusable, videos that won’t play (or are simply hard to listen to), while others are forced to re-render entire segments of their code and files.

At work we were faced with problem number two. I had been at a loss as to what the problem could be. Then it struck me that only our default browsers showed the problem and I thought: perhaps there’s been a codec or Flash update that causes this?

And bingo.

Luckily, TechSmith has already released a patch so we only had to upgrade (we were planning on doing that) and we’re now able to both create new, bug-free content, as well as fix the faulty content in a batch operation. We only have to replace the new files on our server.

Still, this is going to cost us. And it irks me too.

But Adobe seems to stay relaxed under the circumstances.

Their answer is: we’re aware of the issue, we’ll look into it, just hang in there and wait for the next release — whenever that is.

Or, from their forums:

I cannot guarantee what’s going to happen or when. I’m pushing for a fix, and that’s all I can say at this time. Keep in mind that updating Flash Player is a -very- non-trivial task, involving several thousand man-hours of testing just for a single dot release, and hundreds of thousands of testing hours for a major release.

The users’ answer is, let’s say, more colourful.

They just don’t understand how they’ve spent thousand on Adobe software and are now ignored, left out in the cold.

One user said it this way:

At the bottom line, the new flash player is an embarrassment. Adobe released a product that instantly breaks thousands of application and websites all around the world.

Another kept it simpler:

We are losing $$$!

And users? What are their options?

1. Try and ignore the issue and listen to funny sounds coming from a lot of screencasts or not use certain links in Flash presentations.
2. Be patient and wait for a new release.
3. Uninstall the Flash player and replace it with an unsupported older version from the developer site.

That last choice, doesn’t really look like a choice, and I’m convinced that a lot of our customers at least won’t be able to pull that off. They come to us to learn what a browser is, not use unsupported plugins or ActiveX elements.

So, we’ve decided to replace all our content in the coming days and weeks. Nice. Thanks Adobe.

If you haven’t come across the issue, you may have an older version still installed. Good. Stick with 9.0.47.0 (or older).

And meanwhile we wait. Some are already calling they want Macromedia back. Who wouldn’t?

Note: this post is based on a post I published earlier on our tutorial blog at work. It holds my views but has been rewritten where needed. However, although all content here is CC, this remains property of my employer. Just so you know ;)

Tags: screencasting, Adobe, Flash