June 2017 Adobe Flash Player & Shockwave Player security updates

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EP advises: New Adobe Flash Player and Shockwave Player security updates released on Tuesday June 13, 2017- Adobe Flash Player security bulletin APSB1
[See the full post at: June 2017 Adobe Flash Player & Shockwave Player security updates]

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cesmart4125, Elly, JDeC, Lori

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See links to more June 2017 Flash resources in AKB1000002

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JDeC, Kirsty

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I stick to Google Chrome for my Flash content.  I uninstalled all other content based plugins.  I feel better knowing that Google always update Chrome with the latest.

Most of the time my other browsers do just fine defaulting to HTML5 video … if not, I just fire up Chrome!  🙂

Windows 10 Pro 22H2

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I’ve seen several people here (not you in particular) advising others to switch from Firefox to Chrome specifically for this feature and I don’t understand their reasoning. Firefox automatically updates Flash on all of my systems when Adobe releases them.

Firefox also gives me the option to allow Flash to run every time it’s encountered. I don’t know if Chrome also has that option or not as I’ve never used Chrome.

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Killing Flash is long overdue.  It’s been a bug-riddled security nightmare forever.  HTML5 is the future.  iOS no longer supports Flash.

Firefox is my #1 browser, and 99.5% of the day I get along just fine without Flash. Also I have the peace of mind not having to worry if Flash is up to date.  I just never install the plugin.  Even Netflix works without Flash or Silverlight now.

Chrome is my sandbox.  If I need to watch a Flash video, I just pop the URL into Chrome.

It seems that a few mainstream sites still depend on Flash for streaming video, but I expect that number to continue to dwindle rapidly in the future.  I think that even Adobe would like it to go away soon.

Windows 10 Pro 22H2

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I have never seen Firefox update Flash.  Unless that’s something new in the past year or so since I stopped installing the Flash plugin.

Chrome let’s you set plugins on a global setting to “ask”, as well as on a site by site “use global setting”, “always allow on this site”,  or “always block on this site”.

Windows 10 Pro 22H2

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As far as I can tell, I don’t have Shockwave.  I have flashplayer and I update it when it needs it but I’ve never updated Shockwave.  I remember Shockwave as something I once had on Windows 98, but I don’t think I have it now in Windows 7 with Firefox and IE-11.

Have you seen the price of Tums? It's enough to give you heartburn.

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If you have it installed, it will show up under Programs and Featuers in the Control Panel.

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I have not used Shockwave in years as it requires 32 bit IE browsers. Only one is a while do I get a warning about it not working on 64 bit browsers, and I have never noticed what was missing.

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yup, Shockwave is 32bit only. it was only required for very old web sites that still use it which are very few.

minor drawback of HTML5 is that is uses more CPU & RAM resources than Flash, especially with Youtube videos. those differences won’t be noticeable when using recent quad-core AMD & Intel CPUs but viewing HTML5 based videos with dual-core, single core & older CPUs can really put a strain on those older processors.

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A budget dual core Intel i3 or i5 will run Flash or HTML5 video without any issues, even using the integrated Intel HD GPU.

Windows 10 Pro 22H2

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yup JohnW, even the 1st generation Intel Core i3 & i5 CPUs (which are really dual-core but quad-threaded) will handle HTML5 okay. Intel Core 2 Quads, AMD Athlon X4s & Phenom X4s should also be able to handle HTML5 without problems.

I should have been more specific about the “old” dual-core CPUs like AMD Athlon 64 X2 and Intel Core 2 Duos & Pentium Ds; HTML5 can stress these old CPUs out bigtime.

Anyways, Flash Player get a recent update today 6/16: version 26.0.0.131 (ActiveX) for IE under XP/Vista/Win7, Firefox (NPAPI) and Chrome (PPAPI)

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JohnW

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I do get the issue with CPU use and streaming video.  Up until several years ago I was still rocking a strong single core P4 3.0Ghz CPU.  It usually performed OK with most applications, but I began to notice that Flash would take nearly 100% of the core when watching a streaming video.  Constant re-buffering and dropouts were common.  So I eventually upgraded.

It was apparent that current software devs were either making assumptions about the core user base and the hardware they ran, or they were using the latest hardware for development and testing and didn’t care about older systems.

It’s amazing how much difference two cores, and multiple threads makes now.  Also if you run real-time antivirus it can be a big improvement as well.  Sometimes it seems that the AV can use up a thread all by itself!

 

Windows 10 Pro 22H2

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Video performance depends very much on the screen resolution and player size, as well as the CPU/GPU and source resolution; 1080 (Full HD) played back at full screen will produce more dropouts/skipped frames than the same video on a 720 (HD ‘Ready’) full screen or a video scaled down to 720 on a 1080 screen, esp. on the lower end iGPUs per Intel CPU series (yes, Sandy Bridge* has a variety of different iGPUs, as does Ivy, etc.).

Moving up to 4k resolution, all but the most powerful and recent series Intel HD iGPUs are likely to show something more akin to a slideshow rather than a video at full screen/player resolution.

*Sandy Bridge GPU:
HD Graphics: 650 MHz to 1100 MHz
HD Graphics 2000: 650 MHz to 1250 MHz
HD Graphics 3000: 650 MHz to 1350 MHz
HD Graphics P3000: 850 MHz to 1350 MHz

Some common widescreen 16:9 resolutions /~megapixels:
1280×720/0.9 megapixels
1920×1080/2.07 megapixels
3840×2160/8.29 megapixels.

Youtube has a number of different resolutions available, should you want to run your own tests and have the required download bandwidth, a right-click on a playing HTML5 video will give you access to the resolution etc., “Stats for nerds”, iirc.

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Ivy Bridge HD 2500 runs streaming video at full HD without skipping a beat.

Windows 10 Pro 22H2

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An unplanned fix was issued for Adobe Flash Player

All ActiveX, NPAPI and PPAPI 26.0.0.131 (cr*pware free) versions for Windows 7 can be found here https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/installation-problems-flash-player-windows.html#main-pars_text_4

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MrBrian

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And once again, Edge and IE 11 for Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 languish until the next Patch Tuesday.

-- rc primak

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But the latest Flash patch is not a security fix, just a mouse bug:

https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/1000002-links-to-flash-update-resources/#post-120991

Windows 8 and 10 got the last Flash security patch on June 13 (KB4022730).

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MrBrian

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