Chrome (Windows NT 6.1 6.2) users reporting problems with loading and mouseevents - any insights?

[nickd3ps]

For several years now, I have created simple studies (I do psychological stuff) to run online, recruiting participants through Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT). I have had no problems until recently (last 6 to 9 months). Now, some AMT users are reporting problems with stimuli loading or buttons not responding immediately when clicked (e.g., advancing to a new screen). What is common amongst all the users experiencing problems is that they use Chrome, and they also tend to be Windows NT 6.1 or 6.2 users running Flash Player 12.0. But not a single Firefox, Safari, or MSE user has ever reported an issue. I'm just looking for help in troubleshooting this problem. Again, the studies I run are incredibly simple (e.g., no videos being loaded from server, etc.), mostly word presentation where I record time and x,y coordinates of mouse movements as they respond to questions. Would attempting to publish for another target version of Flash Player help? The default setting is to publish the .swf and .html wrapper for Flash Player version 11.7. Any ideas? I also use version 13.0.1 of Flash Professional CC to create my studies if it helps. 

[Andrei1-bKoviI]

Most probably you deal with a known issue of some browsers (or their versions) setting focus off page/DOM. It was a problem with Safari for sometime until about a couple of years ago.

If you are in control of pages where you swf(s) is served - you should try to implement JavaScript that sets focus on the swf object.

Also, exploring different types of swf embedding methodologies may help.

[nickd3ps]

This is helpful. Thanks. So it would be to my advantage to play around with something like SWFObject 2?

http://www.adobe.com/mena_fr/devnet/flashplayer/articles/swfobject.html

Or is there something else you would recommend?

What I've been doing is a far cry from actual web development, but quite interested in learning more. This swfobject seems to get at what you are suggesting (I think). 

[Andrei1-bKoviI]

SWFObject is the most reliable methodology around. However, we do observe that some browser versions present this strange behavior from time to time no matter how swf is embedded.

Amy's catch about Chrome native plugin is a good one. But we do see similar behavior with external plugins as well. Just last week we got similar complaint and employing of different Chrome plugins did not make any difference - swfs were not initially accessible for interactions. In our case there was an iframe involved.

[Amy Blankenship]

Are the users with problems using the Pepper Flash player (part of Chrome) or the normal Flash Player? If the former, they can turn off Pepper Flash until the upgrade to Chrome is released that fixes the problem. At that point, the problem should go away on its own.