Glory Be!
All the issues from the catastrophic release of Flash Player 10.3.183.5 appear to have been fixed.
get.adobe.com/flashplayer
Still counting the cost of the previous update - well into the thousands of dollars. On the bright side, the hypertension it gave me didn't cause a heart attack!
25 August 2011
16 August 2011
Flash Player 10.3.183.5 AS1 Shared Library Bug
I came across a critical bug in Flash Player 10.3.183.5, a security update that was released on Thursday 11th August 2011.
Basically, if you use shared libraries from circa Flash 6 / AS1 with a 2 frame preloader that uses either nextFrame() and/or gotoAndPlay(1), the whole containing swf movie will unload itself and you're left with a blank screen.
Here's the detail:
http://forums.adobe.com/message/3865740
https://bugbase.adobe.com/index.cfm?event=bug&id=2940617
Google Chrome users get Flash updated immediately and automatically and were the first to call tech support. The legacy games would load and then... nothing! Calls from IE and FF users soon followed. As we have lots and lots of swfs for old games still in use, a mild wave of panic started to fill the office.
Luckily the fix is simple, it's just a case of altering the preloader by removing the offending nextFrame() or gotoAndPlay(1). We ended up removing the preloader entirely as the 40k file size of the shared library is tiny by today's standards. Unfortunately for us, we had to do this on 400+ fla's, test them and release them as a hotfix to our clients.
Another cracking update from Adobe! In the UK, this is known as "dropping a bollock!"
Basically, if you use shared libraries from circa Flash 6 / AS1 with a 2 frame preloader that uses either nextFrame() and/or gotoAndPlay(1), the whole containing swf movie will unload itself and you're left with a blank screen.
Here's the detail:
http://forums.adobe.com/message/3865740
https://bugbase.adobe.com/index.cfm?event=bug&id=2940617
Google Chrome users get Flash updated immediately and automatically and were the first to call tech support. The legacy games would load and then... nothing! Calls from IE and FF users soon followed. As we have lots and lots of swfs for old games still in use, a mild wave of panic started to fill the office.
Luckily the fix is simple, it's just a case of altering the preloader by removing the offending nextFrame() or gotoAndPlay(1). We ended up removing the preloader entirely as the 40k file size of the shared library is tiny by today's standards. Unfortunately for us, we had to do this on 400+ fla's, test them and release them as a hotfix to our clients.
Another cracking update from Adobe! In the UK, this is known as "dropping a bollock!"
24 February 2011
Particle Code
Particle Code, unlike its name suggests, is a new cross platform SDK for mobile devices. I first became interested in it when I discovered Actionscript was one of the supported languages.
The basic idea behind Particle Code is to write once and deploy eveywhere and the language you chose to write your code is up to you. The code will then be compiled to native code and packaged as apps for:
This looks like a great idea and has the potential to save hundreds of hours porting an app between devices. However, even though Actionscript is supported, it is a completely separate platform to Flash/Flex, you will not be able to write a Flash Platform application with Particle Code.
Looking at the Particle Code API, it looks fairly similar to the way you would develop apps in Android, you can use Java or Actionscript to create your apps, though I suspect more will be added to that list.
From a Flash Platform developer perspective, there are lots of things missing, MovieClips, Sprites etc. plus you won't be able to do any E4X. You will undoubtedly need to write more code to get anywhere close to the animation capabilities of Flash, but the amount of platforms you can deploy to, may justify that extra effort.
The basic idea behind Particle Code is to write once and deploy eveywhere and the language you chose to write your code is up to you. The code will then be compiled to native code and packaged as apps for:
- iOS
- Android
- BlackBerry
- Windows Phone 7
- J2ME
- Symbian
This looks like a great idea and has the potential to save hundreds of hours porting an app between devices. However, even though Actionscript is supported, it is a completely separate platform to Flash/Flex, you will not be able to write a Flash Platform application with Particle Code.
Looking at the Particle Code API, it looks fairly similar to the way you would develop apps in Android, you can use Java or Actionscript to create your apps, though I suspect more will be added to that list.
From a Flash Platform developer perspective, there are lots of things missing, MovieClips, Sprites etc. plus you won't be able to do any E4X. You will undoubtedly need to write more code to get anywhere close to the animation capabilities of Flash, but the amount of platforms you can deploy to, may justify that extra effort.
09 February 2011
Flash Player 10.2 now available
Following my previous rant about some issues in FP10.1, you'll be pleased to know they're still there in 10.2. Obviously this fix is waiting for the 11.0 release.
Still, it's good to see that the CPU usage for video is vastly improved with Stage Video. However, this comes at a price as it bypasses the usual software rendering pipeline and passes the stream straight to the hardware. Therefore you can only rotate in 90ยบ increments and you can't skew, transform or convert to bitmaps. This is a pure video acceleration feature, which is good news as it saves battery time and will hopefully cause Apple to reconsider its increasingly irrational position regarding the FlashPlayer on iOS.
Although I wouldn't put much faith in that - Mac users beware - this is a known issue:
"On some Macintosh systems with NVidia 9400, GT 320, or GT 330 GPUs, live video streams render all black with hardware acceleration, or all white when using the software decoder."
Other new features include full-screen support for multiple monitors, hardware rendering support for IE9, custom native mouse cursors (use responsibly people!) and sub-pixel text rendering. That's great news if you're Chinese - you may actually be able to read something in 12pt. text!
This looks like a good "point" update, plus the 64-bit "square" version is now out of beta too. Time will tell if I have to go through my API's and fix a load of things as I did for FP10.1, but so far it looks impressive.
FlashPlayer 10.2 Download
FlashPlayer 10.2 Release Notes
Still, it's good to see that the CPU usage for video is vastly improved with Stage Video. However, this comes at a price as it bypasses the usual software rendering pipeline and passes the stream straight to the hardware. Therefore you can only rotate in 90ยบ increments and you can't skew, transform or convert to bitmaps. This is a pure video acceleration feature, which is good news as it saves battery time and will hopefully cause Apple to reconsider its increasingly irrational position regarding the FlashPlayer on iOS.
Although I wouldn't put much faith in that - Mac users beware - this is a known issue:
"On some Macintosh systems with NVidia 9400, GT 320, or GT 330 GPUs, live video streams render all black with hardware acceleration, or all white when using the software decoder."
Other new features include full-screen support for multiple monitors, hardware rendering support for IE9, custom native mouse cursors (use responsibly people!) and sub-pixel text rendering. That's great news if you're Chinese - you may actually be able to read something in 12pt. text!
This looks like a good "point" update, plus the 64-bit "square" version is now out of beta too. Time will tell if I have to go through my API's and fix a load of things as I did for FP10.1, but so far it looks impressive.
FlashPlayer 10.2 Download
FlashPlayer 10.2 Release Notes
02 February 2011
Google vs Bing - my tuppence worth.
As you probably know already, Google is accusing Microsoft of copying its search results on the Bing search engine. you can read a detailed account of the complaint here:
Google: Bing is Cheating, Copying Our Search Results
If you don't want to read all that, it basically says that Microsoft was using IE8 to capture the result of what people were searching for on Google, then copying that result, which would eventually appear on Bing. Google discovered this by adding "synthetic searches", searches made of random strings such as "mbzrxpgjys", added by Google engineers, that would only return results on Google itself. Strange, then, that they started to appear on Bing a few weeks after the Google engineers started searching for those terms using IE8 with the Bing Toolbar and the Suggested Sites feature switched on.
Is what Microsoft doing illegal? It's certainly cheeky, yet many sites use Google's search, albeit branded with a Google logo. I think the key to this is IE8.
The article above examines the T's and C's of IE8 and the Suggested Sites feature, which has 2 key points:
Personally I think passing off the Suggested Sites feature as something other than what it is - spyware - is dodgy in the first place, but the T's and C's probably do give adequate warning. Obviously information gathered by Suggested Sites is used to improve the search results for Bing, which is fair enough, but was the ulterior motive to scrape results from Google?
Aggregating results from search engines is common practice and can be quite useful, but if Microsoft want to use Google results in Bing, then it's only fair play to add the "powered by Google" logo next to them. If they're too precious to do that, then they should stop using Google's results, or at least pay Google to use their results without have to acknowledge the source.
At the end of the day, web searches are based on copying, storing and ranking information from all over the web, it's the forming of relevance and context which is the trick, something that Google nailed in the late 90's. As Isaac Newton admitted to "standing on the shoulders of giants" in order to create the Theory of Gravitation, Bing should be equally gracious if they are to use Google as a part of a utopian search service, vastly superior than its competitors. Bing certainly isn't that.
Cheats never prosper, unless you're Microsoft, which has arguably spent the last 30 odd years copying other peoples ideas. I'd like to think it's time for Google to give them a good hiding, but I doubt this will go any further than exposing Microsoft's practices to the public. If this did go to court, Google may have to openly explain how its precious algorithms work.
Google had concrete proof of this issue on December 31st, but waited until February 1st to release its findings - why? Because that was the date of the Farsight 2011 search engine conference, perfect timing to undermine everything Microsoft was to eulogise about Bing. Google seems to want to fight this battle with hearts and minds rather than through the courts (to date at least). Blog posts like this are popping up all over the web and if it only serves to steer your average computer user away from Internet Explorer, that can only be a good thing!
Google: Bing is Cheating, Copying Our Search Results
If you don't want to read all that, it basically says that Microsoft was using IE8 to capture the result of what people were searching for on Google, then copying that result, which would eventually appear on Bing. Google discovered this by adding "synthetic searches", searches made of random strings such as "mbzrxpgjys", added by Google engineers, that would only return results on Google itself. Strange, then, that they started to appear on Bing a few weeks after the Google engineers started searching for those terms using IE8 with the Bing Toolbar and the Suggested Sites feature switched on.
Is what Microsoft doing illegal? It's certainly cheeky, yet many sites use Google's search, albeit branded with a Google logo. I think the key to this is IE8.
The article above examines the T's and C's of IE8 and the Suggested Sites feature, which has 2 key points:
- "addresses of websites you visit are sent to Microsoft, together with standard computer information."
- "Information associated with the web address, such as search terms or data you entered in forms might be included."
Personally I think passing off the Suggested Sites feature as something other than what it is - spyware - is dodgy in the first place, but the T's and C's probably do give adequate warning. Obviously information gathered by Suggested Sites is used to improve the search results for Bing, which is fair enough, but was the ulterior motive to scrape results from Google?
Aggregating results from search engines is common practice and can be quite useful, but if Microsoft want to use Google results in Bing, then it's only fair play to add the "powered by Google" logo next to them. If they're too precious to do that, then they should stop using Google's results, or at least pay Google to use their results without have to acknowledge the source.
At the end of the day, web searches are based on copying, storing and ranking information from all over the web, it's the forming of relevance and context which is the trick, something that Google nailed in the late 90's. As Isaac Newton admitted to "standing on the shoulders of giants" in order to create the Theory of Gravitation, Bing should be equally gracious if they are to use Google as a part of a utopian search service, vastly superior than its competitors. Bing certainly isn't that.
Cheats never prosper, unless you're Microsoft, which has arguably spent the last 30 odd years copying other peoples ideas. I'd like to think it's time for Google to give them a good hiding, but I doubt this will go any further than exposing Microsoft's practices to the public. If this did go to court, Google may have to openly explain how its precious algorithms work.
Google had concrete proof of this issue on December 31st, but waited until February 1st to release its findings - why? Because that was the date of the Farsight 2011 search engine conference, perfect timing to undermine everything Microsoft was to eulogise about Bing. Google seems to want to fight this battle with hearts and minds rather than through the courts (to date at least). Blog posts like this are popping up all over the web and if it only serves to steer your average computer user away from Internet Explorer, that can only be a good thing!
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