Adobe Reader & Flash Player updates

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This in from ER:New Adobe Reader security updates for August can be found here: https://helpx.adobe.com/security/products/reader/apsb14-19.html And ne
[See the full post at: Adobe Reader & Flash Player updates]

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The Reader/Acrobat update is out-of-band (not scheduled) and urgent because there exploits in the wild already. For Windows versions only, to update versions X and XI.

BTW, why does Adobe offer only version X for Vista, while even the older XP gets XI? Regardless, I only noticed this in the tech specs just today – I have been running Reader XI as soon as it came out – on Vista. But do so at your own risk – Adobe might not help you with problems since it is not officially supported.
http://www.adobe.com/products/reader/tech-specs.html)

One can download the standalone installer instead of using the update mechanism.
http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp?platform=windows&product=10

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This is one of those times that most of the Flash Player versions (the latest major 14.x.x.x versions) are out-of-sync (different minor version numbers).

See the About Flash Player test page to check yours and see the numbers/versions of the updates.
http://www.adobe.com/software/flash/about/

Note that the later 14.x.x.x updates (versus 11.x.x.x updates for Solaris and non-Chrome Linux browsers) are variously
14.0.0.176 (IE, Mac non-Chrome),
14.0.0.177 (Chrome Pepper Flash), and 14.0.0.179 (Windows Mozilla, et al browsers).

See post below on how to force Chrome to use the plug-in Flash version instead of the internal Pepper Flash version (like now for Windows Mozilla browsers, but not Mac).

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(Maybe the post is not showing because it includes an AskWoody dot com link? One more try:)

Also, Chrome has an update to 36.0.1985.143 update, which updates its internal Pepper Flash to 14.0.0.177.

To find out more about how Chrome uses two different Flash versions, how its Pepper Flash can get out of sync with other versions, how Chrome’s update rollout policy/mechanism can cause a lag in updating Chrome and its internal Pepper Flash, how using both may cause incompatibility or instability, and how to enable or disable either or both different versions, see:
http://bit.ly/1lXt1oU
(link on this blog)

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The easiest way to directly download the latest offline-updates for Flash are to follow these links:

http://download.macromedia.com/pub/flashplayer/current/support/install_flash_player.exe

http://download.macromedia.com/pub/flashplayer/current/support/install_flash_player_ax.exe

Chris

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Do NOT force Chrome or Chromium above Version 36 to use the Netscape Protocol Flash Player Plugin!

As of Chrome 36 or (in Windows) Chrome 37, NPAPI plugin support is going away. Only Pepper plugins will be supported. In Linux, this transition has already been accomplished, and the Mozilla NPAPI Flash Player plugin will definitely NOT work in Chrome or Chromium for Linux. The next full version update in Windows, the same thing will happen to Chrome.

As for the supported version of the Flash Player plugins in Linux, Firefox is stuck at Version 11.2.x and will never see a version update. (Security updates are still available.) Chrome for Linux does natively support Pepper Flash at the current version, down to the dot-version level.

Chromium for (Ubuntu) Linux must extract and manually install the Pepper Flash plugin from the Chrome Beta installer — RPM version — for Linux. The normal software update channels have hopelessly out of date versions of Pepper Flash. (My Ubuntu Linux — 14.04 — just got all of these browser version and Flash/Pepper Flash plugin updates through my customized software update channels.)

The Adobe Reader internal mechanism got me up to speed in Windows 7. All seems well after that update.

Java JRE is up to version 7, update 67 for those who are still allowing Java Runtimes on their Windows PCs. Always disable Java Plugins in non-IE browsers through the Advanced Tab in the Java Control Panel (JavaCpl). Linux takes care of its own Java needs through normal software update channels.

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@ rc

It is interesting to see, in the future, Chrome will move to only using its internal Pepper Flash.

It is not common knowledge to most users (hence my link above) that currently, Chrome does use both versions of Flash – again without user involvement (like Google likes to do). Both are enabled by default, though the Chrome update process handles updating the internal Pepper Flash while external Flash update is left to the user’s Flash Player update settings (e.g. Windows Control Panel).

Using both may lead to instability (“Shockwave Flash has crashed” error) or insecurity due to old version, so one should disabled in chrome://plugins. Sometimes, the Pepper Flash version lags, like now for Windows but not Mac.

This is detailed in the bit.ly link.

Not sure if it is even possible to “force” use since the file sizes and names are different (see chrome://plugins for plugin folder locations).

(History: when Netscape was abandoned, Flash updates started getting confused where to put files unlike for Firefox, so I compared to Firefox’s new files and “manually” updated Netscape’s Flash files by copying over to Netscape’s folders – but those were same filenames, et al. Used Netscape until other browsers adopted print scaling – which Chrome still wont implement.)

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For Windows, Chrome isn’t easy to force into accepting anything non-native.

Linux is a different matter. Get the RPM archive of the current Chrome Beta and you have the source for the most up to date Pepper Flash plugin version. The rest is just Expand, Copy and Paste (as Root). For forcing the Adobe NPAPI Flash Plugin, it can no longer be done for Chrome or Chromium in Linux.

So that’s the present and near-term future of Flash Player plugins and forcing one version into another browser.

the long-term future is heading toward HTML 5 applications and plugins, so Flash Player development is slowing, even for Windows and Mac. If JW Player could get a stable HTML 5 version out the door, we would probably already be forgetting that Flash Player ever existed.

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Just updated Chrome again – that makes twice in the last three days. Windows Chrome is at major version 37 now.

Tuesday’s (August 26) update was to 37.0.2062.94. Today’s (August 28) is to 37.0.2062.102. Both are longish updates (> 10 minutes), even on the faster PC that usually takes a couple minutes.

Pepper (PPAPI) Flash version was not updated in both – still at 14.0.0.177.

Does anyone know a faster way to find out the latest stable Chrome version?

I have to scan through the techy http://googlechromereleases.blogspot.com/ to get this basic fact.

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@ rc

Chrome got updated to version 37 on Tuesday and a bug fix on Thursday (see above).

chrome://plugins/ still shows both Flash Players: the Netscape (NPAPI) plugin and internal Pepper (PPAPI).

Can you please cite where Chrome mentions the version roadmap to ending NPAPI plugin support.

My quick search only found this old blog:
http://blog.chromium.org/2013/09/saying-goodbye-to-our-old-friend-npapi.html

This covers whitelisting, dates, and some versions. Seems Chrome 37 will make NPAPI plugins harder to use – but not stopped.

e.g. “July 2014: Chrome 37 has switched to a harder-to-bypass blocking UI for NPAPI.”

e.g. “April 2014: NPAPI support was removed from Chrome for Linux in release 35.”

Also, found these two pages (undated; May 2014) but say same thing:
http://www.chromium.org/developers/npapi-deprecation
http://blog.chromium.org/2014/05/update-on-npapi-deprecation.html

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