(last edited on April 29, 2014 at 1:27 am)
I had a request last night to modify my Flash Player detection code so it would work on Linux Firefox 1.5, as apparently it doesn’t work. As it turns out, the detection code is probably fine: the problem is that Linux doesn’t support Flash Player 8.
That said, there’s nothing in the Emergent Task Timer Onlier Prototype that requires Player 8 features (the changes are mainly in video, bitmap, and font rendering), so I have re-exported as Flash Player 7. So Linux Users, please report in and tell me if it works! Even though apparently there is only one of you…let it not be said that Dave Seah doesn’t care about Linux users! :-) I don’t use Linux GUIs personally, I install my distributions text-only.
» Visit the Emergent Task Timer Online Prototype (Flash Player 7 for Linux Compatibility)
P.S. If you ARE a Linux user, please let me know in the comments! I’d be curious if this is something I should be supporting more in general.
11 Comments
Raises hand for linux
Although I’d note that the problem isn’t that Linux doesn’t support Flash player 8. The problem is that Flash Player 8 doesn’t support Linux. Which seems like semantic nitpicking but is really an indication of which group needs to get off their collective butts and fix the problem.
I should also note that I’m more raising my hand to keep us linux users in mind for future stuff rather than to say that I’ll be using this particular app, although it is nice to see what it looks like finally.
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Hi David,
I am a regular reader of your blog and an avid Linux user. Thanks for making ETT Flash7. It works fine now.
Best regards,
Jochen
Raises another hand for linux
Works fine on ubuntu dapper drake now – thanks for sorting it for linux :-)
Another raised hand for Linux here. I’ve been using the paper version for a while, so I’ll be glad to try it online. Seems to work fine for now, but I’ll keep you posted.
Thank you very much. I tried to use it, and was unable to, due to the Linux restriction. :( Now i am a happy user of your task tracker. :)
Masukomi: Oh, that’s an excellent point on the semantics…you’re absolutely right!
On a side note, I had assumed that Macromedia had their act together and was doing simultaneous platform releases (especially with all their enterprise-level pushes lately), so I was surprised to find out that this wasn’t the case. Then again, no Linux users had even mentioned this until I got an email today. Hopefully this all gets sorted out soon, as I was reading that FP9 is what Macromedia is focusing on.
Jochen, Gwilym, Kena: Awesome! Glad to hear it is working!
Just got back from a morning meeting, and someone has pointed out that the time bar no longer advances. This is across all players. I am going to roll back to the previous version for now (flash player 8) and track down the bug.
The bug appears to be caused by a difference in the way Flash initializes movieclips at construction time in classes: the timebar is not valid at time the class is constructed in FP7, but it is when targeting FP8. The new FlashPlayer 7 / Linux Compatible build should address that now.
Side note: The FP7 version is 57K, while the FP8 version is 99K. I wonder where that extra space is going…that’s a LOT.
Works like a champ on Firefox 1.01 (I know, always with the upgrading!) and Mandrake 10.1.
-RM
Thanks for the confirmation, Richard! Good to know! I was reading today that there were some detection problems on other systems, so maybe the flash detection code I’m using (the default from Flash 8’s HTML generator) is crap…will switch to FlashObject or something.