- Adobe Flash Player
- Adobe Flash Player For Mac Os X
- Adobe Flash Player For Safari Free Download
- Adobe Flash Player For Mac
Adobe Flash Player is a free software plug-in used by web browsers to view multimedia, execute rich Internet applications, and stream video on your Mac. Adobe has worked with Apple to sandbox Flash Player under Safari in Mac OS X, restricting the ability of attackers to exploit any vulnerabilities they might find in the browser plug-in.
With all the controversy in recent weeks regarding Apple’s criticisms of Flash, I decided to take a look at what problems Mac users are having running Flash in Safari. To get an idea, I went to the Safari section of Apple’s Discussions Boards and searched on the keyword “Flash.”
On the day I did the search, it yielded 78 hits over the last 90 days. Some of the hits were “duplicates,” citing separate messages for the same thread. On the other hand, I discovered a few relevant threads on my own that did not show up anywhere in the search results. Still, using what the search uncovered as a rough approximation, there was less than one hit per day over the previous three months. This is not exactly a tsunami of complaints.
Further, for many of the postings, Flash turned out not to be the root cause of the symptom. For example, an inability to play Flash videos on the KTUU Web page was resolved by disabling Safari’s Block Pop-Up Windows option (located in the Safari menu). Another supposed Flash problem was fixed by moving the Safari application back to the Applications folder. Yet another issue was resolved by reinstalling the latest version of Mac OS X via the “combo” updater. Several instances of potential Flash conflicts turned out to be due instead to third-party input managers or “enhancers”—something that Apple specifically warns about. As a final extreme example, one user oddly lamented: “I can’t figure out why my Safari, running 64-bit for several months now, is having no problems with Flash.”
Adobe Flash Player
This doesn’t mean that there are not genuine problems with Flash. I have certainly had instances where a Flash video would not play or did so only at an annoyingly slow pace. But such issues may be less frequent than often assumed.
Adobe Flash Player For Mac Os X
For Flash hassles that remained unresolved in the Discussions postings, such as an inability to play YouTube videos or Flash-related crashes, the general recommendation is to try the advice given in an Adobe TechNote. It’s not a panacea, but it’s worth a look. The most useful tip contained in the document is to uninstall and reinstall Flash Player, making sure to follow the separate uninstall instructions. As to the article’s other suggestions, I would add the following:
Adobe Flash Player For Safari Free Download
- The suggestion to repair permissions is not likely to fix anything. The permissions problem appears restricted to Flash Player 9.x. You should be using a 10.x version of Flash Player.
- Although it’s always possible that reinstalling the latest version of Safari could help, I could not find one instance where anyone found this to be so. Personally, I wouldn’t waste my time trying this.
- While the Adobe Flash Player page correctly lists the latest release version as 10.0.45.2, you may be using the even newer Gala preview beta (currently at version 10.1.81.24).
Adobe Flash Player For Mac
Although this is touched on briefly in other posts, I would like some report from those who were brave enough to do the update, and what were their experiences. Typically Adobe has conflicting information depending on where you look, and it was someone on another thread that actually pointed me to a statement that the update is supposed to apply for 10.5.8 and the latest Safari update, and pointed me to the proper update link. Elsewhere it seems like Leopard was left out altogether in the system requirements.
Based on my experience with Adobe on both Windows and Mac platforms, I am extremely reluctant to proceed as more often than not things don't work, and one has great difficulty in backtracking. In as much as Flash works perfectly now, security issue notwithstanding, I have to decide which is the larger threat: the security hole, or Adobe's wretched installation processes.
Comments most welcome.