513976 - Adobe Flash actionscript "loadMovie" has severe problems in Firefox (related to caché)

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Core Graveyard :: Plug-ins, defect)

Description

[Jesse Naylor]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.0; WOW64; Trident/4.0; SLCC1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; Media Center PC 5.0; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30618; InfoPath.2)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; es-ES; rv:1.9.1.1) Gecko/20090715 Firefox/3.5.1 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)

Firefox does not work with flash websites that use the "loadMovie" action which can be used to load external images (like JPEGs) or external flash files (SWFs) into movieClip containers within the original flash file. This problem only occurs in Firefox; all other browsers work fine.

It seems to be a caché problem, because the files do not appear when reading from the caché, but they do when you force to re-download.

My usual code to load an image (JPEG) or a flash file (SWF) into a movieClip would have been as follows:
_root.contentLoader.loadMovie("directory/myFile.swf");

Instead of this, I'm telling the browser NOT TO READ FROM THE CACHÉ, but to reload the file, and I've tested it on Windows, Mac and Linux, all with Firefox, and it finally works. It also works on every other Internet Browser. The only problem is that you're not reading from the caché, which means every time you have to wait for your files to load. It solves the problem for now, until Mozilla realizes and solves this bug. Here's the code that works:
_root.contentLoader.loadMovie("directory/myFile.swf?foo=" + new Date().getTime() );

This allows me to use the loadMovie actionscript code in a way that it also works in Firefox (as well as all other browsers), but a solution that allows us to use the caché would be very appreciated. I don't want to load my files every time in every browser just so that it works in Firefox.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. When developing an Adobe Flash file (for a webpage), use the "loadMovie" actionscript on one button to load an external file into a movieClip, and then use the same code to load a different file into the same movieClip.
2. Publish the file and/or the site.
3. Now test it in Firefox. On your system, it all works perfectly, but not on the server. Within your published flash file, click the first button to load the first external file, then click the second button to load the second external file, and then click the first button again. Now both external files has dissappeard! You may notice that the files will now display for a few milisecond and then vanish!
Actual Results:  
External files loaded into a containing flash movieClip vanish when reading from the caché.

Expected Results:  
The external files should have displayed, as this is what is supposed to happen (this error only occurs in Firefox, not in Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera, etc...)

Comment 1

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

We know nothing about Actionscript or anything inside the flash plugin and there is nearly nothing we can do. Please report this to Adobe and they can create a bug here if they find the reason why it's failing on their side. That something fails onyl with Gecko doesn't mean that it's a Gecko bug because the plugin itself does different stuff with different Clients.

When you want to talk about plugins you have to use NPAPI examples that are failing.