Impending disaster - The end of an era

We developed an application 12 years ago using the Adobe authoring system using Flash to display screens allowing clients to enter and edit data which maintained their databases   An icon on a desktop provided URL access to the app connecting secure access to authorized users to access and maintain data in an open source hosted SQL database on their premises many of which have grown to several hundred thousand records.

With the automatic embedding of Flash in new browsers and systems using certain automatic update features many of our client end users find themselves with Flash v24.0.0.221 or greater now installed.

I filed a bug report in February reporting what I thought at the time was a simple keyboard mishandling issue with the Flash change from v24.0.0.194 to v24.0.0.221.  It took me a while to identify Flash as the offending component.

I set up a demonstration instance on one of our servers for the ADOBE support techs and they verified the existence of the changed interaction.

Now instead of starting our app and entering a few thousand records a client can enter and save one record if they make no entry errors.

After the SAVE the space bar becomes a command to end the edit process.

ABOBE has flagged the bug as fixed with the release of v25.0.0.127.  Many of my clients have been in this state since Valentines Day.

As it turned out Windows, Macintosh and all updated browsers are experiencing this effect.  I've contracted to have our system rewritten using HTML5.

In the near term I was getting by using VMware XP mode instances with an out IE and old Flash or so I thought.

Suddenly with some of those users not having updates turned off or using Chrome we found v24.0.0.221 installed and the VMware instances displaying a WINDOWS SHUTDOWN message on startup.  VMware support expressed no clue as to the cause but after an extensive effort here I've removed the updated Flash and repaired the XPVM for one client.  I've got a dozen or so more which will each require several hours to repair.

I'd certainly suggest that no one use Flash as it was original advertised.  The director of a major university physics department who wrote our original application cautioned me 12 years ago but the young web enthusiasts won out their RICH CONTENT management argument.

NEVER AGAIN

My final system will be all OPEN SOURCE freely available reasonably well documented, managed by someone who cares.  Millions of records entered with by thousands of folks over hundreds of thousands of hours should not be at risk of inaccessibility.  I guess we were the only ones foolish enough to utilize these particular Flash features?

This  due to ability of 4 or 5 companies with the capability to automatically down date over a billion devices internationally in a day.

Enough said?