Flash Player for DVDs for Sky and Telescope Collection - past decades' set - Mac Mini

[Guest]

I experienced much difficulty in trying to get the Adobe Flash Player on the Mac Mini to read the DVD set for the Sky and Telescope Magazine.   The only support at Sky and Telescope was this document from them which said to go to System Preferences and Flash Player and use the Trusted Tab or something to accept Sky and Telescope.  But the document said to delete the quotations.  I could not delete.  Apple Support said it was an older version of Flash Player and they did not want to do anything.  Is there still a way to go back to the older version of Flash Player or how to make it work to accept the Sky and Telescope Set.

[_maria_]

To clarify, are you loading Flash content from the DVD?  If so, this was disabled by default in Flash Player 23. See Release Notes Flash Player 23 AIR 23  for more information, including instructions on how to configure your system to allow loading local Flash content (section: Disabling local-with-filesystem access in Flash Player by default)

[Guest]

It is a DVD Set that I purchased from Sky and Telescope Magazine.   When I inserted the DVD Disc into the Superdrive for the Mac Mini, I could not get it to pull up ok.   Then I figured out that it needed the prior version of the Flash Player.

[jeromiec83223024]

There are probably multiple barriers to entry at this point.

First and foremost, you need to consider that the software on that DVD was written at a discrete point in time.  It's making assumptions and offering advice that was probably correct and relevant when that DVD was authored, but the world has changed.

Like Maria said, we no longer allow Flash-based content to access the local filesystem by default.  Moreover, I believe that Safari also prevents Flash Player from accessing the local filesystem.

Moving to an old version of Flash Player is a.) most likely unnecessary, and b.) leaves you vulnerable to every security issue patched between now and when that old version was originally released (which I imagine is at least several years).  Moving backwards is a terrible idea if you use the computer for accessing the Internet.

There are good reasons for disabling local filesystem access, but it's necessary for compatibility scenarios like this, where you're using a web browser to access content on archival media.  The link Maria posted above tells you how to enable local filesystem access in Flash Player.

After successfully modifying Flash Player's configuration file to enable local filesystem access using those instructions, Flash Player should have access to read the data off the DVD.

That said, that may not be enough.  You may need to experiment with the available browsers on your system (Firefox, etc), and because most major US browser are making it increasingly difficult to use Flash Player at all, you may need to adjust the default configuration for those browsers to allow Flash content to play.

The following guides will show you how to enable Flash Player in current browsers:

Enable Adobe Flash Player for Safari

Enable Flash Player for Firefox

Use or fix Flash audio & video - Computer - Google Chrome Help