A non-beta Flash Player 9 for Linux release

We just released another version of the Flash Player 9 for Linux, the version number is 9.0.31.0. What is different this time is that we do no call it a beta anymore and that it is available on our main download site (Click on the Linux x86 link). For the impatient ones, the direct download of the tarball is here, and the .rpm file is here:

Alright, so far so good... That does not mean that this is a release which I consider feature complete. We do however consider this version to be vastly better than any previous Flash Player for Linux. Since customers were starting to ask for a final version we decided to feature freeze what we have. So two months ago we moved the Flash Player 9 for Linux code into a separate code branch for stabilization. QE (Quality Engineering) has been hammering on this branch for all this time. Every bug fix had to be approved by management. The build you can download now (9.0.31.0) represents that branch.

The internal unstable branch is currently open for all developers and for the first time we build the Windows, Mac and Linux versions on a daily basis from the same code branch. There are various large work items which still need to be tackled and we are in full swing getting this ready as soon as possible. These changes are disruptive for the stability of the build and will be for a while.

Here is a list of some of the Linux specific items we are working on right now, it is far from complete and each of the items might or might not make it into the next version:

• XEmbed support (specifically GtkPlug). We have tons of bugs which can only be fixed this way.


• WMODE support. This will be tricky since we need to coordinate this feature with Mozilla as the browsers on Linux have no support for this right now. Also note that XEmbed support is a prerequisite for this feature to work at all.


• Support for Opera. Hopefully we will get it into a state where it runs stable for more than 5 minutes. Opera 9.10 solved a lot of issues, but not all.


• Rewrite the braindead/non-standard http stack in the standalone player. Right now this bug can make the standalone player timeout and block for a long time if you need to open any external URL (local files are fine). I'll spare you the details, but this code is really embarassing in my mind.


• Try to fix other functional bugs which require larger infrastructural changes.


• Finish the flashsupport add-on library. Adding camera, microphone support etc. Move the project to sourceforge.net or similar site. BTW, it's my fault that this has not seen too many changes lately since I own this piece. :-)


• Add full screen support.


• 64bit work is ongoing. You can follow some of the daily progress in the Tamarin CVS tree. (Alright, not too much happened end of December. Forgive us, the holidays are always a little slow in a company like Adobe.)

So what changed between Flash Player 9.0.21.78 beta and 9.0.31.0? Here is a partial list of Linux specific bugs we fixed:


192642 Crash during "Browse multi"
191932 After plug-in player installed, firefox cannot launch (crash while launching)
191298 Firefox 1.5 crashes during tests execution (automated section)
191514 Non Functioning rtmps not functioning
192615 Crash hang navigating away from camera/mic
192747 LocalConnection not functioning between standalone players
192653 change standalone name from gflashplayer to flashplayer
192399 Crash - GrowableBuffer and/or Generated Code
191741 crash when "Allow" is clicked in camera settings UI popup when no camera driver is installed on SUSE 9
192006 Clicking on URL failed to launch websites
191749 mouseDown count advancing more than once per click - stand alone
187060 Rotating the image moves image out of the panel
177699 Bug in detection kit in combination with Linux player
191427 rtmpt not functioning
192036 Incorrectly Functioning File->Close is still selectable in the projector
191843 website crashes with a segmentation fault.
191267 Unable to copy/paste text from text fields using context menu.
191857 remove all printfs from release builds of the plugin and standalone


(Update: I started this entry last week to start listing the fixed bugs, but actually posted the news January 16th. Darn. So some you you saw January 11th as the post date... I am really sorry for the confusion...)

Flash Player 9 for Linux Beta 2

We have just refreshed the beta of Adobe Flash Player 9 for Linux, the current version is now 9.0.21.78. This version fixes several critical issues, especially some of the sound problems should be a thing of the past. So we encourage you to update.

Here is a partial list of bugs which were fixed (GNU/Linux specific, general bugs are mentioned in the labs release notes):

188992 - ALSA 2-second stopper problem
189976 - Leaking X11 connections
183202 - Flash crashes with X COMPOSITE
187715 - Asian characters are not displaying as expceted
187409 - Artifacts when initially playing + video stream freeze when selecting second video clip
189437 - Device text rendering performance is less than optimal
187850 - OS freeze right clicking flash movie after clicking another active link
184706 - browser crashes when trying to run use getters or setters from a different scope
188398 - in all the System.codePage 'FileReference', when user attempts to browse, a CRASH is generated
184549 - Mandriva 2006. Installing libflashplayer.so crashes browser
181584 - GUI not rendering correctly. Green out edges on inner frames.
189254 - wipe effect doesn't look right on components if they have no descenders
187885 - Some part of the image is shown out of panel
188349 - Clipping and Masking is not working correctly for Flex Containers when you scroll Text
187689 - Text can become garbled when window redraws.
188709 - Browser hangs
187490 - Crash accessing flash game
188805 - ALT key does not function in Linux player. (Ubuntu, others?)
188089 - RichTextEditor's formatting are not preserved during cut/copy/paste only in linux player
188997 - Selection copy won't paste into Flash.
186982 - activate, deactivate, mouseLeave events don't get fired when clicking inside/outside the player instance
187170 - caps lock and num lock are detected when flash player instance, or even the browser, does not have focus
187741 - change event not triggered when entering text in text field

If you are using flashsupport.c you should update it since I have removed the ICU dependency. I am currently revising this internally since I have received some great feedback on it. You should see these changes in the next version. Hopefully I'll also be able to finally check this into our public SVN repository at that time, since it really belongs there, not on a random web server, without a correct installation script or working versioning system.

Another update: Please note that this version does NOT work with Opera (nor did 9.0.21.55 btw). We know about it and are working with Opera to resolve it. Some sites might work, but most will eventually display a gray or pink rectangle, meaning that the Flash Player did crash. We know it is a problem with the way X11 is used (if you switch X11 to use synchronous mode it should work).

Also, we do NOT support GTK1 browsers and probably never will. That means any FireFox version older than 1.5 will probably not work and older Mozilla/SeaMonkey versions will also fail. The final version will have a safety check for this and the Flash Player will not try to run at all in this case. Right now you will most likely crash.