FLASH: [RESPONSE] Recent Flash Player Release

[Eric J. Wittman]

Dear FlashR-Ls,


It is with the Flash Team's deepest regret that the latest Flash Player

releases (versions 4.0r20 Macintosh and 4.0r25 Windows) contain behavior

that has broken several sites utilizing load variables from external data

sources.


The nature of this issue is documented in TechNote #14234 on the Macromedia

Flash Support Center. The problem discovered is that Flash Player is

inserting an extra ampersand character when passing variables from a Flash

movie. This effects users who are sending data to a server-side mechanism,

such as ASP, ColdFusion or CGI.


Another change made to the latest release of Flash Player is also related to

loading external variables from a data source. Previous releases of Flash

Player allowed variables to be loaded from a domain source outside of the

current one the Flash movie was playing from. What this means in theory is

that someone could load or send data from one site and send to another site.

This behavior has been considered a "feature" by many a Flash developer for

the ease of access to information however is considered a breach of security

by industry security experts. It was at the request by several developers

and industry experts that prompted this change in behavior. This issue and

appropriate solution is documented in TechNote #14213 in the Macromedia

Flash Support Center.


We are currently working overtime to resolve the extra ampersand issue. We

anticipate a new Flash Player release with this fix within the next 1-2 days

after thorough QA has been done. To ensure all angles of this issue are

tested, we would like to have Flash developers who are currently

experiencing the extra ampersand problem to forward me (

emanflash [dot] com

)

their site URLs so we can incorporate them into our testing matrix.


Again, we apologize for this inconvenience and are working hard to resolve

this issue ASAP.


Cordially,

Eric J. Wittman

Senior Product Manager, Flash

-----------------------------



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  To unsubscribe or change your list settings go to

http://www.chinwag.com/flasher or email

helpchinwag [dot] com