10.3.183.5 bug with shared libraries and goto statements

[Schuhster]

We detected a severe bug in the latest flash player (10.3.183.5) running a customers commercial flash 6 application. This AS1 application uses shared libraries and loadMovie calls. It has been running for more than 100,000 users/year problem free since the release of flash player 6/7 until yesterday. The 10.3.183.5 flash player unloads all content at specific points resulting in a empty (black) screen. You can call it a crash. There seems to be bugs in the execution of gotoAndPlay() and gotoAndStop() and in the management routines of shared libraries because we could avoid the black screen crash by commenting out the goto handlers or unbinding linked items from shared libraries.

Our testing configruations:

Win XP, IE8, FF5
Win 7, IE9, FF5
Mac OS 10.6, FF5
Mac OS 10.7, FF5

Under Mac OS 10.7 there is a freezed screen instead of a black screen, but the player context menu tells us that there is no movie loaded like in Windows testing configuration.
In all environments the black screen doesn't occur on later player version than 10.3.183.5.

Please fix these bugs or give us informations about a workaround for the "black screen effect" in flash player 10.3.183.5 or rather a statement.

[pwillener]

It would be best if you filed a bug report at http://bugbase.adobe.com/ and then post the bug number back in this topic.

[Joe_Paice]

We have encountered exacly the same issue. We also found that the nextFrame() function is affected.

Our testing config:

Win XP, IE7, FF5, Chrome

We could avoid this by calling a method on the parent object that then calls nextFrame(), or other goto method.

This is a critical issue for us so any updates would be much appreciated.

I have logged a bug on bugbase but can not get the issue number due to security issues.

[Schuhster]

Meanwhile we posted the issue to Adobe bugbase also.

Unfortunately your workaround didn't solve this problem for our application. In some very few cases we could avoid the crash by reordering the movie timeline in order to make play head jump in positive direction instead of jumping back.

Successfull tests with Flash Player 11 beta (32 Bit and 64 Bit) revealed, that this bug is only an issue for the 10.3.183.5 player.

[chris.campbell]

Thank you guys for reporting this.  I believe the bug in question is the following:

Flash Player 10.3.183.5 Shared library/preload bug

While we're still investigating, I've heard the following workaround might be applicable:

We have a MovieClip in the library with "Import for runtime sharing"checked, and the instance is in Frame 3 on the main timeline.

Any call to gotoAndPlay() to frame 3 and beyond will lead to the entire SWFunloading or terminating into a blank screen. This happens even if thegotoAndPlay code is already at a later frame. There is no problem if we allowthe frames to progress sequentially.

Our initialization sequences used to switch between 2 frames on the maintimeline after the skin until it completes the init sequence. We moved the initsequence into another MovieClip and stop() the main timeline instead, andresumed with a play(). Ultimately, we just had to avoid using gotoAndPlay() onthe main timeline after the imported movieclip.

Please let me know if the workaround helps or if I've gotten the bug wrong.

Thanks,

Chris

[Joe_Paice]

Hi Chris,

That sounds like the same bug.I don't think only frame 3 and beyond is correct. Upon further investigation we have been able to replicate this bug by doing the following:

Place an "imported for runtime sharing" movieclip on stage that spans 2 frames.

Add a gotoAndPlay(1) action to frame 2.

Publish and test in browser.

This results in a blank screen

I have voted on the bugbase issue https://bugbase.adobe.com/index.cfm?event=bug&id=2940617 as it seems similar. I also commented with our implementation and uploaded the files that replicate the bug.

We look forward to a resolution.

Thanks for your help.

Joe

[DanLavender]

I had a similar issue with a 2 frame preloader in AS1 with nextFrame() in the script. Removing nextFrame() solved the problem.

[PPM]

Chris,

Thanks for looking into this problem, this for us is a "Show Stopping" terminal bug.

It is not feasible to modify our application to remove all the code that triggers this bug, we have 10 years of development invested several thousand files in our product which has been made unusable by this "Security update".

Adobe are recommending that everyone upgrade to this version knowing that this will cause flash to fail on all sites that use a shared library.  We've just had to issue and advisory to our customers to inform them that if they want to continue to use the software they are paying for that they have to stay on an older, known to be insecure, version of the player.

Yes, the Player 11 Beta2 does work, it shows no sign of this issue for us, but when is this going to be released? (before the end of 2011?)

What can I tell our customers?  When are they going to be able to both use our product and not be at risk from running an insecure player?

Regards,

Ian.

[chris.campbell]

Hi Ian,

Thank for you the feedback.  I believe you've also commented on the bug, but if you haven't please do vote and leave a comment.

I've passed all this feedback along to our team and we're actively looking into this with the highest priority.  As soon as I have additional details I'll share them here.

Chris

[PPM]

Hi Chris,

Thanks for the reply.

Are you able to provide an update on this issue? 

As I'm sure you can understand, we need to know if a fix is likely to be issued within the near future or do we have to commit to re-write our application.

As the re-write is going to take several days it will be a waste of time and money if you issue a fix around the same time or shortly after.

Regards,

Ian

[chris.campbell]

We will be releasing a new version of Flash Player that addresses this bug and a few other critical issues that have been reported against 10.3.183.5.  Due to logistics, I don't have an exact release date but I'll update again once I have something firmer.  We know this is severely impacting you, and we will treat this as our top priority.  I apologize again and we'll keep you updated as new information becomes available.  Please feel free to post back with questions here or you can contact me directly at ccampbel@adobe.com.

Thanks,

Chris

[PPM]

Hi Chris,

We noticed over the weekend that the priority had been put up to "5-ASAP-Build/Ship Stopper", so we realise that you're working on this, but we really do need to have some idea of when this update will be available.

Are we looking at a month, fortnight, week, few days or hours?

Also (as I mentioned elsewhere) is there somewhere we can sign-up to notifications about new flash players being released, and / or notifications about beta versions so that we can ensure that this situation doesn't happen again.

Regards,

Ian.

[chris.campbell]

Hi Ian,

If all goes to plan, the update should be available Wednesday evening (8/24) or sometime Thursday (8/25).  I'll update again tomorrow with additional info.

Thanks,

Chris

[chris.campbell]

Also, check out this FAQ for the link to the releases blog:

Is there a way to be automatically notified when a new Flash Runtime release is made?

Chris

[PPM]

Hi Chris,

Thanks for the update.

Regards,

Ian.

[Javier_Y]

Do not understand how Adobe has not stopped the distribution of version 10.3.183.5. Every day there aremore users with a version that makes it unusable for many applications. It seems a very serious situation.

[astro_mike]

Yes,, it would appear that this 10.3.183.5 update has broken the third-party Flash countdown timers on two of my websites:-

http://www.levinstargazers.org.nz

http://www.marssociety.org.nz

As they are both Google sites, the third-party Flash component is "installed" by completing settings in the "Admin panel" at http://www.usflashmap.com/component/countdown_timer.htm and copying the HTML code that is generated.  Now the countdown timers just appear as a blank white rectangle on the page.  Right-clicking the rectangle opens the Flash context menu, which states "Movie not loaded".

Unfortunately, after upgrading to this release, even the Admin panel referred to above is no longer visible (presumably this is a Flash component also).  After reading about some of the issues in this forum, I uninstalled this release and reinstalled 10.3.181.34, which has fixed the problem for me, but our website users that have already ugraded to the latest release will be affected by this issue.

Our websites are far from "high volume", but I imagine that this will be impacting some others quite severely!

[chris.campbell]

A new version of the player was released last night that should address this issue.  For additional details, please see the following post:

Flash Player 10.3.183.7 Released

Thanks,

Chris

[PPM]

Hi Chris,

This certainly seems to have eliminated the issue!

Thanks for your help and for keeping us updated.

Can you explain how Adobe will ensure that this does not happen again?

The RSS feed you mentioned above does not currently show that a new player has been released.

If the feed is the only way to be notified of releases, how long should it take for the updated player to be in the RSS?

Based on this one example, it would seem like our users are more likely to tell us that a new player is available than the RSS!

Regards,

Ian

[chris.campbell]

Hi Ian,

While I can't promise that we won't have bugs in our future releases, we do treat injections (bugs added with the last release) as a top priority.  We'll be adding test cases (both manual and automated) for all of the bugs found in 10.3.183.5 and I'm sure we'll have a thorough post mortem to figure out what went wrong.

I'm not sure why the runtime releases feed has not been updated, but I'm looking into it and I'll see if we can add this to our release checklist (if it isn't already).

Thanks,
Chris

[hkudo]

Hi lan,

Chris entered his long vacation now so I would take over this issue to follow up. I am asking internal team who is in charge for the RSS. I'll update you if I find out anything. I apologize inconvenient experience.

thanks,

Hitomi