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scotta53290112
scotta53290112
Participant
May 21, 2018
Answered

Flash Apps Issues with Specific Combinations of Flash and Firefox

  • May 21, 2018
  • 1 reply
  • 503 views

Greetings -

I develop for multiple flash applications on a closed network, large user base.  Recently we've started to see flash rendering issues with our applications.  After extensive testing we have found the issues with our applications to be directly related to the versions of Flash and Firefox used.

If Flash ~v26 or older is used, the applications load fine

If FireFox ~v52 or older is used, the applications load fine (We are unable to use other browsers at this time)

If both Flash is upgraded above v26 AND Firefox is upgraded above v52, our applications start to "freeze" when not in focus.  It's as if the rendering of the flash applications pauses when the browser tab is not in focus, but doesn't finish or refresh when focus is re-gained.

It's common for users to launch 3+ Flash apps from a launch page all at once and then go to the desired browser tab as needed.  The issue is that with the above combinations, they go to a page that is basically white.  As you move the mouse around, various parts of the page will paint.  If you re-size the page, everything re-paints and all it good.

We have been running this way for many years and this is a new issue.  Below is a quick table of what works / doesn't work.  Something appears to be in conflict between Flash and Firefox in newer versions.

Any help would be great, I'm banging my head on the wall here.

Thanks,

Scott

Firefox VersionFlash VersionRender Issues
v52.6 (64 bit)v25_0r0_148Works Correctly
v52.6 (64 bit)v27_0r0_183

Works Correctly

v52.6 (64 bit)v29_0r0_113Works Correctly
v56.0.1 (64 bit)v25_0r0_148Works Correctly
v56.0.1 (64 bit)v27_0r0_183Render Issues
v56.0.1 (64 bit)v29_0r0_113Render Issues
v58.0 (64 bit)v25_0r0_148Works Correctly
v58.0 (64 bit)v29_0r0_113Render Issues
v60.0.1 ESR (64 bit)v25_0r0_148Works Correctly
v60.0.1 ESR (64 bit)v29_0r0_113Render Issues
    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer jeromiec83223024

    You beat me to the punch. 

    If WMODE=direct works for you, that's a great workaround.  I can't think of a good reason to set a flex app to WMODE=transparent.  I have a feeling that it was in some boilerplate code that was widely disseminated.  

    1 reply

    jeromiec83223024
    jeromiec83223024
    Inspiring
    May 23, 2018

    I'm pretty sure that this is going to be related to the Async Drawing feature in Firefox.  It represents a big architectural change in how drawing is handled, and there was definitely some fallout.

    As a test, you can disable Async Drawing temporarily to see if it resolves the problem:

    Type about:config in your browsers address bar and hit enter

    Accept that you will be careful

    Search for dom.ipc.plugins.asyncdrawing.enabled

    Set that parameters value to false by double clicking on the value true

    Restart your browser

    There's been a lot of bugfixes on both sides, so you should probably consider our builds as interdependent, particularly with regard to this work.  Theres a pretty decent chance that this is already fixed.  I definitely saw similar symptoms when this feature was originally introduced, but I'm not aware of any similar outstanding cases.

    If the latest available Firefox (60.0.0.1) and the latest available Flash Player (29.0.0.171) don't work, that's the most interesting datapoint, since any fixes would target the latest product versions.  You may also want to check Firefox Nightly, just to see if there's already a fix for this in their pipeline, but it hasn't hit the generally available release yet.

    If the problem persists, then we (and/or Mozilla) are going to need to be able to reproduce the problem under a C++ debugger to understand the root cause of the issue.

    I'm assuming that you have a named enterprise support rep from Adobe.  It would probably be good to loop them in at that point.  I'm not aware of a similar widespread issue that's affecting a large class of content (all Flex apps on Firefox, etc.), so I don't feel I'm going to be able to just pull a similar site out of my back pocket.

    scotta53290112
    scotta53290112Author
    Participant
    May 23, 2018

    Setting dom.ipc.plugins.asyncdrawing.enabled to false did resolve the issue.

    Also, I found another article that recommended setting the wmode to direct in swfobject, that also appears to fix the issue without having to change asyncdrawing.  Some of our apps had a wmode of transparent, which was most likely a default from something, the rest where using the default.  As far as I can tell, changing from transparent to direct has not changed the apps in any way.

    Thoughts on using wmode of direct to resolve this issue?

    I will test with the latest version of Firefox and Flash as possible, but ideally I need to find a solution that will work across many different combinations of Firefox / Flash versions.

    Thanks.

    jeromiec83223024
    jeromiec83223024Correct answer
    Inspiring
    May 23, 2018

    You beat me to the punch. 

    If WMODE=direct works for you, that's a great workaround.  I can't think of a good reason to set a flex app to WMODE=transparent.  I have a feeling that it was in some boilerplate code that was widely disseminated.  

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