Release Notes | Flash Player 10.3

Welcome to Adobe Flash Player 10.3 software! This document is for users developing content for Flash Player 10.3 and addresses issues that are not discussed in the Flash Professional, Flash Builder, or Flex documentation. This document may be updated periodically as more information becomes available.

For current Flash Player system requirements, visit http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/systemreqs/.

Flash Player 10.3 supports the following languages: Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Czech, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish.

Adobe recommends that all Flash Player users on supported systems update to the most recent version of the player through the Flash Player Download Center.

Ensure that you have the latest version of Flash Player installed by clicking here to check the version you have installed and the latest shipping version for each platform.

The first public release of Flash Player 10.3 is version 10.3.181.14. Users should update to the newest version of Flash Player 10.3 for content development and testing. Updated versions of the content debugger and other players are posted on the Flash Player Support Center Downloads page.

For Flash Player installation instructions, visit http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/productinfo/instructions/.

For uninstallation instructions, visit http://www.adobe.com/go/flashplayer_uninstall_en

Flash Player 10.3 contains several new features and enhancements:

• Media Measurement
• Acoustic Echo Cancellation
• Integration with browser privacy controls for managing local storage  
• Native Control Panel
• Auto-Update notification for Mac OS

Measuring video just got easier. With Flash Player 10.3 and Adobe® SiteCatalyst®, developers can implement video usage analytics for websites with as little as two lines of code.  Analytics solution providers can use a set of new open APIs to easily implement consistent video analytics irrespective of implementation or delivery protocol.  Media Measurement for Flash allows companies to get real-time, aggregated reporting of how their video content is distributed, what the audience reach is, and how much video is played.

Flash Player 10.3 enables developers to create real-time online collaboration experiences with high-quality audio, telephony, in-game voice chat, and group conferencing applications for desktop PCs. Developers can take advantage of acoustic echo cancellation, noise suppression, and voice activity detection. This feature is only be available for desktop OSes. End users will be able to experience higher quality audio facilitating smoother conversation flow, without using a headset.

Users now have a simpler way to clear local storage from the browser settings interface – similar to how users clear their browser cookies today. Flash Player 10.3 integrates control of local storage with the browser’s privacy settings in Mozilla Firefox 4, Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 and higher, Google Chrome 11 (Available in Chrome Dev Channel), and a future release of Apple Safari.

Flash Player 10.3 provides users with streamlined controls for managing their Flash Player privacy, security and storage settings. Windows, Mac, and Linux users can access the Flash Player Settings Manager directly from the Control Panels or System Preferences on their computers.

Flash Player 10.3 supports automatic notification of software updates on Mac OS, making it easier for Mac users to stay current with new capabilities in the latest version of Flash Player.

For more information about configuring auto-update notifications, refer to http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/167/16701594.html. 

Developers can access new APIs in the Flash Player 10.3 by making manual changes to their existing SDK/tooling configuration. To learn more about the new APIs, read the online ActionScript 3 reference documentation. Adobe Flash Professional CS5.5, Flash Builder 4.5, and Flex SDK 4.5 will not be updated for the new runtime.

Flash Player 10.3.181.14 includes security enhancements described in Security Bulletin APSB11-12. 

Adobe Flash Player 10.3.181.16 addresses an issue with hardware acceleration on some systems with Intel HD Graphics adapters when viewing SWF content in Internet Explorer 9. With Flash Player 10.3.181.14 installed, SWF content appeared in the upper-left corner of the screen. A full detailed description can be viewed by the Knowledge Based support article.

Note: This release is for Internet Explorer broswers on Windows only.

Adobe Flash Player 10.3.181.22 includes security enhancements described in Security Bulletin APSB11-13. 

 Note: The Windows Activex version is 10.3.181.23. There is no difference between 22 and 23.

Adobe Flash Player 10.3.181.26 includes security enhancements described in Security Bulletin APSB11-18. 

Adobe Flash Player 10.3.181.34 addresses compatibility issues with some content using cross-domain policy files.

Adobe Flash Player 10.3.183.5 includes security enhancements described in Security Bulletin APSB11-21. 

 Adobe Flash Player 10.3.183.7 addresses compatibility issues:

• Calls to gotoAndPlay() and gotoAndStop() no longer fail in some Flash applications which load shared libraries (2943612).
• TextField instances which specify a negative offset (x property contains a negative value) now correctly flow the text horizontally instead of vertically (2941680).
• Improved performance in some cases when displaying complex animations (2941931).
• MSI versions of the Flash Player Installer now properly install the Native Settings Manager control panel on Windows (2939928).
• Flash applications at certain websites (http://www.justin.tv, http://heylenmichel.de) now load correctly (2939645, 2944081). 

Adobe Flash Player 10.3.183.10 includes security enhancements described in Security Bulletin APSB11-26. 

Adobe Flash Player 10.3.183.11 includes security enhancements described in Security Bulletin APSB11-28.

Adobe Flash Player 10.3.183.15 includes security enhancements described in Security Bulletin APSB12-03.

Adobe Flash Player 10.3.183.16 and 10.3.183.17 include security enhancements described in Security Bulletin APSB12-05.

Flash Player 10.3.183.19 includes security enhancements described in Security Bulletin APSB12-09

Flash Player 10.3.183.23 includes security enhancements described in Security Bulletin APSB12-19

[FP-###] denotes bugs that are filed in the Adobe Flash Player Bug Database: https://bugbase.adobe.com/ 

• [FP-5317] Flash Player crashes when a high definition video is played in any browser (2848668)
• [FP-6143] Flash app does not resize properly when wmode=transparent
• [FP-6163] During 'Press Esc to exit full screen message' Flash player does not allow to load swf which loads another swf into SWFLoader. (2808217)
• [FP-6198] url is being returned escaped in Flash Player 10.2, but wasn't in Flash Player 10.1 (2812702)
• [FP-6230] DisplacementMapFilter doesn't work when movie is scaled (2814161)
• [JIRA FP-6971] Flash Player Crashed with Hardware Acceleration Enabled (2889369)

• SWF content does not load after upgrading from Mac OSX 10.6.2 Server to 10.6.5/10.6.6 Server (2793343)
• On Mac OS 10.4 and 10.5 systems, users may encounter a limit on the amount of data they can upload at one time via FileReference (2812090)
• Stability improvements and fixed top crash issues across Google Chrome, Microsoft Internet Explorer, and Mozilla Firefox.
• On Mac OS X Lion, the Flash Player Settings dialog box does not respond to mouse clicks (2918693) 

• Apple MacBook, MacBook Air or Mac Mini systems using the Intel GMA X3100 GPU may have rendering issues when attempting to watch GPU rendered video (2813404)
• Windows users with systems using NVidia Optimus technology which has two GPUs that switch dynamically depending on the graphics operation would occasionally see a black or green screen when trying to view video in fullscreen. We are working with NVidia to resolve the issue (2745863, 2821031).[JIRA-5626]
• On http://www.youtube.com/lifeinaday, users may experiance video pausing when entering/exiting full screen mode (2803013) and incorrect positioning of videos (2794616, 7296598)Resolved as issue with the content.
  
  
• Audio may hang when switching tabs using Internet Explorer 9 (2918650)

General

• Flash Player 10.2 is not yet supported in development builds of Solaris 11. Oracle recommends running Flash Player 10.2 on Solaris 10 until the next developer drop of Solaris 11 is avaiable.

• When an URL containing & or % is saved to a SharedObject file redirectSO.sol all of the parameters after these characters are stripped off. (1909140)

• CSS styles should not cascade across sandbox boundaries. (2261815)

• startDrag and stopDrag do not work when the target is a 2D child of a 3D parent. (2200972)

• POST requests with no body reverting to GET. (2223288)

• XML.appendChild does not function correctly when published as SWF10; works fine as SWF9. (2340839)

• Behavior of Socket write methods is inconsistent on different platforms. (2580727)

• Last SWF Loaded sets scriptTimeLimit. (2500755)

• [FP-1569] AS3 Timeline: Child Sprite ADDED_TO_STAGE event is fired twice. (2300936)

• AS3 Timeline: First frame of Movie Clip animation played twice when created and added to stage with ActionScript. (2520095)

• [FP-4423] onEnterFrame gets called more often than necessary. (2614589)

• When Out of Memory Handling is triggered in the Standalone Player, the Standalone Player simply exits without displaying an out of memory error. (2555713) 

• When a getURL() command encounters a redirect, the new URL may be over-censored in certain configurations (2546455)

• On Mac OS 10.6, FileReference.upload fails for files larger than 2 GB (2819848)

• On RedHat OS version 5, the Native Control Panel fails to launch from the context menu or the System Preferences Menu (2821279)

• [FP-6252] Matrix3D returns the wrong result for the determinant (2816787)

• NetStream.Step.Notify status event is not dispatched for every frame when new frames are rendered (2840198)

• Child SWFs such as Flex modules, including resource modules, fail to load in certain instances when the SWF location is specified as a URL parameter.  See http://www.adobe.com/go/resourcemoduleissue for more information.

Audio/Video

• Stage Video accelerated rendering is always available when wmode=direct and when Flash Player is in full screen mode, regardless of wmode. Stage Video acceleration may be available in other wmode settings but it is not guaranteed.

• Adobe is aware of issues with specific GPU driver versions and has notified manufacturers of any issues discovered during testing. Adobe recommends updating to the latest GPU driver versions to take advantage of the new Stage Video capabilities and other accelerated rendering features.

• H.264 Video Hardware acceleration is not available on some Mac platforms. Please Refer the Apple Developer Connection technote on which Mac configurations support Hardware decoding: (http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#technotes/tn2010/tn2267.html)

• H.264 Hardware decoding on Linux is available as an experimental feature and has been tested on NVidia GT 330 and Broadcom BCM70015 GPUs. Users may choose to enable hardware decoding by adding EnableLinuxHWVideoDecode=1 in an mms.cfg configuration file. Users may experiance instability and crashes while watching hardware accelerated video. Please report any issues to http://bugs.adobe.com/flashplayer.

• H.264 Video Hardware acceleration is not available for DRM-protected content on Broadcom graphics chips. 

• For all supported Intel GPUs, we recommend using an Aero windows theme. Performance is significantly improved for fullscreen playback with Aero-enabled windows environments.

• On some Macintosh systems, for content using Stage Video, dragging the window to a secondary monitor while video is playing and then launching into full screen mode causes the video rendering to be corrupted. (2802209)

• Mac users may run into rendering issues with certain live streams due to an incompatibility between the stream encoding and the hardware decoder. We are aware of this issue and are working with Apple to resolve it. Users may workaround the issue by pausing and then unpausing the live stream. Developers can work around this issue by forcing the video to be decoded in software - create two Video objects, attach the stream to the first, then stop it and attach the stream to the second Video object (2819870, 2818959, 2779420).

• On Windows 7, video can fail to render in certain situations when going to fullscreen and then seeking (JIRA-6656, 2854821)

• Playback of FMLE video streams from an FMS server stops after 10-15 hours (2758692)

• When using StageVideo, moving the video to a second monitor and then sending it to fullscreen will cause corruption (2802209)

• When running Firefox 3.6 on Mac OS 10.6, videos do not scroll properly at ign.com (2812890)

• In certain situations, users may not be able to resume video play when in fullscreen mode at http://www.gatorade.com/ (2823782)

• When viewing video at foodnetwork.com with Internet Explorer, the video stutters while moving the mouse (2834660)

• ATI GPUs fail to render StageVideo on Linux platforms (2835389)

• Some videos may stop about 4 seconds prematurely (2762398)

• Macbook Air users may encounter stutter video playback on some youtube.com videos which are higher that 480p in resolution when Hardware Acceleration is enabled (2845317)

• On Macbook Air models equipped with NVidia 9400M, certain youtube videos may not playback correctly when using the Safari browser (2767923).

Text/Text Input

• On Windows XP, text does not render correctly when the system color quality is set to 16 bit. Workaround: set color quality to 32 bit. (2782569)

• [FP-1982] appendText when appending from another text field does not append in the correct location when the source string contains "\n". (2341522)

• Classic Text: Large font sizes are not drawing correctly on stage on in exported SWF Movies. (2483664)

• Scale text with Free Transform scales text incorrectly goes beyond text boundary and is cut off and too big. (2486588)

• [FP-2256] Text flows outside text field with advanced anti aliasing. (2447161)

• On Linux OSes, the change event fails to fire upon entering keystrokes into a TextField (2830596)

Content Protection/Output Protection

• Content Protection is not available on the Solaris platform or on mobile devices.

• Content Protection is not available on the Standalone Player or External Player. 

• Videos that require Output Protection will only playback on Windows platforms. 

Installation/Uninstallation

• The Flash Player MSI installers report a generic error message for all installation failures (error 1722). More descriptive installation failure information can be found in the installation log file.  See this TechNote for more information.

• Kubuntu users should use the following link to install Flash Player 10.3: apt:adobe-flash-properties-kde?channel=$distro-partner

   

   

Browser

• Chrome:

  • Printing SWFs is not enabled in Google Chrome. We are working with Google to address this issue. (2490502) 

• Safari:

  • Printing SWFs is not enabled in Safari on Windows platforms. We are investigating this issue with Apple. (2490502) 
• Firefox:
  • [FP-19322] In Firefox, a FaultEvent returns a status code of zero, ignoring the status returned by the web server (2827551)
  • Content Hero game at http://www.fishhf.com/ fails to load when using Firefox 3 (2834776)
  • When using Firefox 4 on Ubuntu Operating System, videos at new.music.yahoo.com fail to play (2840163)
• Internet Explorer
  • [FP-6597] In Internet Explorer, tab navigation may stop working after tabbing to the end of Flash content ( 2849526)

• Flash Player Developer Center 

• Flash Player Product Page 
  
  

• Flash Player Support 
  
  

• Flash Player Help

• User Forums

Found a bug? Please send the detailed bug information via the online Adobe Bug and Issue Management System.

SWF-based H.264 video may be decoded by your graphics hardware. There may be video bugs that can only be reproduced with your particular video card and driver. When reporting a bug involving video, it is essential to note your graphics card and driver, along with your operating system and browser, so that we can reproduce and investigate issues. Please be sure to include this information as described in Instructions for Reporting Video Bugs. 

Note: Due to the high volume of email we receive, we are unable to respond to every request.

Thank you for using Adobe Flash Player and for taking the time to send us your feedback.