494891 - bbc.co.uk science quiz - can't sniff for Flash Player with two-digit version numbers (fails with Flash 10, works with Flash 9), only broken in Gecko browsers

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Tech Evangelism Graveyard :: English US, defect)

Description

[Tobias (:Tobbi) Markus]

On http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/smiles/index_1.shtml?gender=&age=&occupation=&country=&education=&outlook=2&confidence=5&programme= there should be kind of a quiz which requires Flash Player. However, Flash player is detected correctly on Internet Explorer but not on Firefox.

Comment 1

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

What version of Firefox, and what version of Flash?

The site seems to work fine with a Camino trunk build and Flash 9 (can't test Flash 10 at the moment, but I wouldn't be surprised if the script is only looking at the first digit of the version number).

Comment 2

[Tobias (:Tobbi) Markus]

(In reply to comment #1)
> What version of Firefox, and what version of Flash?
> 
I'm using 3.0.10 (Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.0.10) Gecko/2009042316 Firefox/3.0.10 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)) and Shockwave Flash 10.0 r22.

Can't retest with Flash 9 to see if it's indeed the Flash version number but might be.

Comment 3

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

If you can find the problem script, that'll probably answer the question. Meanwhile, I'll keep this on my to-do list to look into when I reinstall Flash 10.

Comment 4

[Tobias (:Tobbi) Markus]

(In reply to comment #3)
> If you can find the problem script, that'll probably answer the question.

I just found the problematic script:
		<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">
<!--
// modify the figure below to the version to be detected
var PlayerVersion = 6;	
//thats it
var useRedirect = false; 	
var flash2Installed = false;		// boolean. true if is flash 2
var flash3Installed = false;		// boolean. true if is flash 3
var flash4Installed = false;		// boolean. true if is flash 4
var flash5Installed = false;		// boolean. true if is flash 5
var flash6Installed = false;		// boolean. true if is flash 6
var flash7Installed = false;		// boolean. true if is flash 7
var flash8Installed = false;		// boolean. true if is flash 8

//HERE WE GO:
var maxVersion = 8;					// highest version we can actually detect


var actualVersion = 0;				// version the user really has
var hasRightVersion = false;		// boolean. true if it's safe to embed the flash movie in the page
var jsVersion = 1.0;				// the version of javascript
// -->
</SCRIPT>

That's the problem. (complete function from ll. 350 to 386 in the source code)

Comment 5

[Tobias (:Tobbi) Markus]

Assigning this to myself, I will notify them about the issue.

Comment 6

[Tobias (:Tobbi) Markus]

I notified the BBC Web Development team about the issue now.

Comment 7

[philippe (part-time)]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/flash/wordmaster/
is an another set of pages that suffer from the same issue.

Flash detection is done in
http://www.bbc.co.uk/china/wordmaster/v7_swfsniff.js

Via the forums:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=1479165

Comment 8

[Tobias (:Tobbi) Markus]

As of now, this no longer seems to be an issue. Both flash applets are working fine.

Based on this experience, I'm closing the bug.