Flash Plug-in

[SergeantZombo]

Let me start by apologizing if this topic/question has been asked and covered already.

I just came across this browser today. I play roleplaying games(D&D, World of Darkness, Etc) on a text based flash roleplaying chat with a bunch of other folks that has been around since 2008. I was looking for a way to continue accessing the flash based chat past December of this year which led me to your web-browser. Your roadmap stated that you plan to continue support for plug-ins like Flash. Does this mean that you have no plans to disable used of flash on your browser anytime in the near future? Looking for a long-term solution to continue enjoying said flash based chat.

Thanks in advance for any response.

[moonbat]

Your roadmap stated that you plan to continue support for plug-ins like Flash. Does this mean that you have no plans to disable used of flash on your browser anytime in the near future?

Nope, so long as you have a copy of the flash installer you will be able to install and use it with Pale Moon.

[athenian200]

Adobe will make it harder to find the Flash Player after the end of the year, and will take all the downloads off their site. So if you want Flash, you should probably download it now and save a copy. In other words, if it stops working, it won't be because we dropped support, but because Adobe found a way to abuse their automatic update system to disable it. The guy in charge of the project made a statement regarding the matter here:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=23191&p=177534&hili ... er#p177542

[Pentium4User]

You have to keep the offline installer.
The normal installer is just a downloader helper application and downloads Flash from Adobe's server, but that will be shutting down at the end of the year.

[SergeantZombo]

Thankyou. I appreciate the responses.

I saw where adobe stated:

Starting with the Flash Player June 2020 release, enterprises can enable whitelisting for Flash Player. Doing so has multiple benefits:

• Explicitly whitelist Flash Player content that you trust and block all other Flash content. While many browsers provide the option to block Flash Player on a per site basis, some do not. With this change, it won’t matter which browser is being used because Flash Player itself will keep a list of whitelisted URLs.

• Any whitelisted content will continue to run post EOL, while all other Flash Player content is blocked by default. Please be aware that enabling content to run post EOL is not advised and done at your own risk.

• Domains that have been explicitly whitelisted will continue to load and play Flash content normally through the end of 2020 and beyond. 

• Please note that Flash Player’s ability to run is dependent on browser support so please check with the appropriate browser vendor for more details.

So it sounds as though they do not plan to completely do away with anyone being able to access Flash after December and more just their involvement with flash and absolve themselves of liability given the security risks involved with Flash.

I myself am not worried since all I plan to use flash for after December is the Flash chat I roleplay on.

[Moonchild]

Sounds like a real PITA having to whitelist flash content TWICE, once in the browser, and once in the plugin because Adobe thinks users can't be trusted to use browser features properly.
Might want to consider using the last flash plugin version prior to this BS measure (May 2020) forever? Unless of course it has an option to whitelist everything in favor of giving the browser proper control per-site. e.g. it won't work if the plugin has to whitelist a CDN - you'd be whitelisting everything from that CDN regardless of originating site loaded in (since the plugin can't control that, itself; it will just be given the CDN url to load from)

[Lurker_01]

Just found out in one of the news sites the phrase "Adobe will also prompt users to uninstall Flash Player on their PCs later this year"...

Off-topic:
Btw Moonchild, Chrome already thinks that the user should not be trusted and if you allow flash for this domain it is only a temporally setting until you restart the browser, so you need to edit group policy/registry to set permanent whitelist (adding a protocol/domain pair).

[Moonraker]

Seeing as we are on the subject.is there anyway i can download flash games for instance on to my computer .?
I intend to use flash as long as i can and beyond the cut off time.

[SergeantZombo]

I am not at the house to check right now Moonraker but I did find a program I downloaded that let’s you play thousands of flash games on your computer. I will see what it was called once I get home for you.

[Tharthan]

SeargeantZombo (zombo.com?), have you considered using IRC for your chatting purposes? If you set up a channel with your pals, maybe you could make it work without much hassle.

In other words, if it stops working, it won't be because we dropped support, but because Adobe found a way to abuse their automatic update system to disable it.

Is there a way to remove the updater? I'm not sure if I have an updater, but if I do, where would it be?

You have to keep the offline installer.
The normal installer is just a downloader helper application and downloads Flash from Adobe's server, but that will be shutting down at the end of the year.

Is it possible that archive.org will keep copies of the downloader?

[adesh]

Is it possible that archive.org will keep copies of the downloader?

They can't keep the copies if it violates copyright/license.

[Суки читают]

I very much doubt that Adobe will hard remove the installers just after the EoS date. The same happened with the Shockwave player last year. Despite Adobe saying that it wouldn't be available for download anymore, the installers are still there if you know the direct links.

[coffeebreak]

For now, it's possible to download any released version from the Flash Player archive.
But IMO anyone who really wants these installers should download them now, while still officially available.

One cannot count on Adobe being slow to take down this page. And it's not realistic to assume that the links (if you know them) will stay valid after the page is gone. (A few years ago when Adobe removed their enterprise downloads page from public access the links went dead at the same time.)

Is there a way to remove the updater?

On Windows 7 (which I use) AFAIK there is no "updater" file.
(From a bit of web searching, there seems to be one in Windows 10, in \Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\, and also an Adobe "update service". I have no direct knowledge, but if you are concerned there's stuff out there if you choose to search.)

I personally turn off autoupdates by adding the following to Flash Player's config file, mms.cfg:

Code: Select all

AutoUpdateDisable=1

The file location in Windows is:
32 bit Windows: C:\Windows\System32\Macromed\Flash\mms.cfg
64 bit Windows: C:\Windows\SysWow64\Macromed\Flash\mms.cfg

For instruction, look at Flash Player Admin Guides (they're PDFs) under the pdf bookmarks: Privacy and Security Settings (mms.cfg) -> Update options (about using mms.cfg, but not about update settings, you might also look here and here).

[Moonchild]

But IMO anyone who really wants these installers should download them now, while still officially available.

Guess what?...

[Tharthan]

I personally turn off autoupdates by adding the following to Flash Player's config file, mms.cfg:

Code: Select all

AutoUpdateDisable=1

The file location in Windows is:
32 bit Windows: C:\Windows\System32\Macromed\Flash\mms.cfg
64 bit Windows: C:\Windows\SysWow64\Macromed\Flash\mms.cfg

Thanks. I set that.

[nicolaasjan]

Is it possible that archive.org will keep copies of the downloader?

They can't keep the copies if it violates copyright/license.

Try e.g. this:
https://web.archive.org/web/20200630185339/https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/archived-flash-player-versions.html
From there I could download a zip file (very slow).

[Satai Delenn]

Hi All,

OK, so based upon what everyone is saying, if I have the Flash Player in my Control Panel, I'll still be able to play browser based Flash games after the end of this year? Yes? No? I already went in and changed the settings to "Notify Me" of any updates so it can't be messed with anymore without my direct knowledge, so I'm hoping that means it can't be removed from my computer? But someone here mentioned that I'd need some file on my computer in case it stopped working and needed to reload it? How do I get that and store that on my computer? I'm not really tech savvy so this is not common knowledge to me.

Thanks!

P.S. (I went to the site listed in the post above mine, but there's no download button after clicking on the "Flash Player Download Center" and changing it from Mac to Windows. It remains forever stuck on "Step 1 of 3")

P.P.S. (OK, so I managed to download some version from May further down on the page, but how do I know if it's for Windows or Mac? If I open the file and it's for Mac, is it going to mess up my computer? All it says is, "fp_32.0.0.371_archive.zip" Nothing in that says anything about being Mac or Windows)

[coffeebreak]

I managed to download some version from May further down on the page, but how do I know if it's for Windows or Mac?

The Flash Player zipped archive contains many different installers, one of everything.

Open the archive and look inside the folder that is not marked "debug" and read the files' names.
Also look at the files' sizes, in order to distinguish the Windows offline NPAPI installer from the Windows web installer, which is much smaller. (The various Mac installers all have mac somewhere in their name, and are DMG File(s) btw.)

The NPAPI full (offline) installer for Windows from the May 2020 release is named flashplayer32_0r0_371_win.exe .

[Satai Delenn]

I managed to download some version from May further down on the page, but how do I know if it's for Windows or Mac?

The Flash Player zipped archive contains many different installers, one of everything.

Open the archive and look inside the folder that is not marked "debug" and read the files' names.
Also look at the files' sizes, in order to distinguish the Windows offline NPAPI installer from the Windows web installer, which is much smaller. (The various Mac installers all have mac somewhere in their name, and are DMG File(s) btw.)

The NPAPI full (offline) installer for Windows from the May 2020 release is named flashplayer32_0r0_371_win.exe .

fp_32.0.0.371_archive.zip.png

I'm not sure I understand. The lists are either for developers or the list is for the Flashplayer AND Debugger (all under one list), or they're for some android thing. That's it. And I don't see anything with an "0r0" in it. And nothing has an "win.exe" in it.

The list looks like this:


Flash Player archives

Release and Content Debugger archives

(Released 5/12/2020) Flash Player 32.0.0.371 (425 MB)
(Released 4/14/2020) Flash Player 32.0.0.363 (425 MB)
(Released 3/11/2020) Flash Player 32.0.0.344 (425 MB)
(Released 2/11/2020) Flash Player 32.0.0.330 (425 MB)
(Released 1/21/2020) Flash Player 32.0.0.321 (425 MB)
(Released 1/14/2020) Flash Player 32.0.0.314 (425 MB)
(Released 12/10/2019) Flash Player 32.0.0.303 (425 MB)
(Released 11/13/2019) Flash Player 32.0.0.293 (425 MB)
(Released 10/09/2019) Flash Player 32.0.0.270 (425 MB)
(Released 09/10/2019) Flash Player 32.0.0.255 (425 MB)
(Released 08/13/2019) Flash Player 32.0.0.238 (425 MB)
(Released 07/9/2019) Flash Player 32.0.0.223 (425 MB)

There's more, but that's what the list looks like. Nothing with and "0r0" or "win.exe" as you can see.

[coffeebreak]

I'm not sure I understand.

The release that you downloaded, fp_32.0.0.371_archive.zip, is not itself an executable file.
It's a compressed folder that has multiple installers inside of it. You will have to extract the contents of the archive in order to see and use them. flashplayer32_0r0_371_win.exe is one of the installers INSIDE OF fp_32.0.0.371_archive.zip .

In Windows, select the .zip folder, right-click and from the context menu choose Extract All....
The contents of the archive will be extracted to a folder with the same name as the .zip folder, only without the .zip ending.