765788 - [adbe 3217427] Regression Flash11.3.300.257:the window resizes itself automatically, preventing the user from resizing the width of Firefox's window. Problem occurs on every page using CSS media queries with responsive embedded videos

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(External Software Affecting Firefox Graveyard :: Flash (Adobe), defect, P1)

Description

[x.redir]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:13.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/13.0.1
Build ID: 20120614114901

Steps to reproduce:

I went to any of the following pages:
http://avexdesigns.com/childish-gambino-getting-some-love/
http://webdesignerwall.com/demo/elastic-videos/
http://css-tricks.com/NetMag/FluidWidthVideo/demo.php

All these pages were working very fine for years (you can check the dates published) on all browsers, including Firefox. Recent update of Firefox introduced this terrible behavior. I believe it must be fixed as an extremely urgent emergency – as it affects users in an unacceptable way. I get many customers contacting me about this very issue every single day for almost a week now, and sadly I can only recommend them to switch over to other web browsers for the moment... I believe that because of this kind of low quality check (if any) before releasing updates on the stable release channel, Firefox is loosing market shares as well as damaging its reputation as a reliable platform... which is not anymore, and that is sad.


Actual results:

I cannot resize the width of my Firefox window.


Expected results:

I should be able to resize the width of my Firefox window, like I was able on Firefox 12, and like I am able on Opera, Chrome, Safari, and even Internet Explorer.

Comment 1

[Alice0775 White]

Confirmed in 
http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/b1a0fb2bdbf7
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:16.0) Gecko/16.0 Firefox/16.0a1 ID:20120618030531

I can reproduce with Flash Plugin 11.3.300.257.
And I also reproduce in Firefox8.0-16.0a1 as well with Flash Plugin 11.3.300.257.

*Appendding ProtectedMode=0 to mms.cfg helps.
*And using FlashPlayer10.3.183.20 also helps.

However,This problem dows not happens Opera12.0 and Google Chrome19.0.1084.56(not build-in flash) with Flash Plugin 11.3.300.257.

Comment 2

[Alice0775 White]

I filed adobe bug https://bugbase.adobe.com/index.cfm?event=bug&id=3217427

Comment 3

[Kohei Yoshino [:kohei]]

We've heard that Japanese users are encountering this issue on Nico Nico Douga, one of the most popular video site in Japan.

Comment 4

[Jim Mathies [:jimm]]

Reproducible when the tab is visible but not when it's in the background. 

STR:

1) load 
http://css-tricks.com/NetMag/FluidWidthVideo/Article-FluidWidthVideo.php
2) change the width of the browser window using the Winodws window frame

result: you can resize the window, it appears to be locked at a set width.

Flipping to another tab, resizing, then flipping back to the demo tab works.

Looks like a pretty serious regression with the new flash player.

Comment 5

[Jim Mathies [:jimm]]

edit - you *can't* resize the window

Comment 6

[Jim Mathies [:jimm]]

Also, killing flash using the task manager "fixes" the problem.

Comment 7

[Jim Mathies [:jimm]]

Attachment: iframe video test case

Comment 8

[Jim Mathies [:jimm]]

In looking at the spy++ trace, we send a size change event to the plugin window but it looks like one of the child windows resets the width back. This breaks out of the resize operation in the browser.

Comment 9

[Jim Mathies [:jimm]]

Also, this is not addressed in the new flash update 11.3.300.262.

Comment 11

[Jeromie Clark]

We're tracking this as 3217427

Comment 12

[x.redir]

It looks like it's another serious bug that will get forgotten for years like many other Firefox bugs, stop adding new features and start fixing the existing ones! Please!

Changed the priority and severity to bring attention.
Thank you.

Comment 13

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

This is a bug in the Flash plugin, per comments above.  Please do talk to Adobe about getting it fixed....

Comment 14

[x.redir]

I don't think so, as the exact same version of Flash does not block window resizing in other browsers.

I understand there is a conflict between the latest Flash version and Firefox, but it seems that this conflict can be solved by either parties, as there is no conflict between the latest Flash and other browsers, so it's as much Firefox's responsibility to fix it as it is for Adobe.

Comment 15

[Jim Mathies [:jimm]]

(In reply to x.redir from comment #14)
> I don't think so, as the exact same version of Flash does not block window
> resizing in other browsers.

Different revs of flash run in each browser. Adobe recently released a new rev of flash for firefox that includes major backend feature changes. We're trying to sort out various issues that have cropped up. So please be patient.

Comment 16

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

> I don't think so

The Flash developers seem to think so (comment 11).  The Firefox developers who looked into what happens here think so (comment 8).

> as the exact same version of Flash

Flash, even in the same version, internally looks at what browser it's running in and runs different code in various cases.

We're obviously looking into this, but the fact is that Flash changed its behavior somehow, in Firefox only, and our ability to debug Flash is somewhat limited since we don't exactly have the source code available or anything.

Comment 17

[Alex Keybl [:akeybl]]

I nominated to keep this on my radar until it's clear this is Adobe's bug - now that it is, we'll just make sure to include this in a roll-up of 11.3 issues to Adobe in the near future.

Comment 18

[smadayag]

the last internal(#3219125) status is openToFix in the Dolores project...

Comment 19

[x.redir]

That might help you guys understand and fix the issue:

"It happens to all pages where a Flash element has the size of 100% width / 100% height of the window or frame. Flash elements with fixed pixel size do not cause a problem. I think it's not a Javascript problem, because it also blocks the window resize if you just call a swf file with no html around."
- quoted from https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/929385#answer-345642

Thanks for working on fixing this as soon as you can...

Comment 20

[smadayag]

thanks for your helpful comments.  we made sure it was added to our internal bug...

Comment 24

[x.redir]

I can see that more and more people are reporting what appears to be duplicate of this bug, is there any advancement from the Adobe side? Please at least provide an estimate date or just confirm that this is being addressed at all by Adobe?
Thank you...

Comment 26

[x.redir]

I can see almost everyday new duplicates of this bug, as more and more people updating Firefox and Flash encounter this very issue. 

Is this being addressed at all by Mozilla or Adobe? as this software combination won't work anymore... It has been 3 weeks that I recommend to my clients that are reporting to me this issue to switch to an alternate browser like Chrome, Opera or even IE!

After officially supporting and recommending Firefox to dozens of users, investors, customers, I now find myself in an embarrassing contradiction – is it the end of the Firefox project? is Firefox dead?

Comment 27

[Leman Bennett [Omega]]

Please don't spam the bug.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=etiquette.html

Comment 30

[Keith McCade]

Not quite clear if my 769954 is a duplicate of this one but it's worth agreeing here with the sentiment of x.redir at least.

As someone that is moving into 'responsive' design exclusively it is regretful that I will have to display something like 'best viewed in anything but FF' until this gets resolved. Responsive is exploding and without a swift fix FF could lose serious ground to the new chrome on the block, which would be a damned shame, when a browser can't do something that IE can it's time to worry in my book.

I hope between here and Adobe this gets resolved soon.

Comment 31

[Robert O'Callahan (:roc) (email my personal email if necessary)]

Over to Nick to see if we can find a workaround for Adobe's bug.

Comment 32

[Tom Chiverton]

You can add https://reports.extravision.com/ to the list of sites that have this problem. Just a normal .swf embedded with SWFObject.

It doesn't use media queries, but the presence of a full-page Flash application does seem to trigger the same issue.

Comment 33

[Keith McCade]

Moved to here from 769954: http://www.rowena-tarot.com/firefoxbug.html for reference.

Comment 34

[Nick Cameron [:nrc]]

Just so everyone knows that I am actually working on this and not ignoring it: I can reproduce the bug very easily and I have been putting my debugger to work. I have a pretty good idea of the sequence of calls/events/messages between the various processes and windows which cause this bug. It is complex and fiddly and I don't think it would help to explain it here. I can change various lines of code to prevent the bug at the expense of not re-painting the flash plugin or very poor resizing performance. But I don't have a proper fix - that is proving to be very difficult (progress is slow and frustrating). At this point I am not 100% sure there is a work around possible in just our code (i.e., without Adobe fixing anything at there end), but I am pretty hopeful that something can be found.

Comment 35

[Jeromie Clark]

We have a tentative fix on our side.  It should land in tonight's build.  I can share a test build with someone at Mozilla tomorrow.  Just shoot me an email directly.

Comment 36

[Tom Chiverton]

Thanks for the update Nick, Jeromie. Great to see progress and a fix in the works from both ends!

Nick, I think slow refresh performance (that would be on the affected platform only, right ? And possibly only in circumstances that would otherwise fail to resize at all ?) would be better than what happens now.

Jeromie, you probably can't say (yet? publicly?) but I'll ask anyway: would this be a candidate for a point update to the Player rather than having to wait (months) for the next 11.x build ? You can reply in the thread on this issue in the Player pre-release forum if you like.

Comment 37

[Jeromie Clark]

This fix should be available for public download in the next Flash Player 11.4 beta.  For folks under NDA, I can share a build today with the fix for evaluation.

Comment 38

[Leman Bennett [Omega]]

Unfortunately the 11.4 fix does not work consistently on systems where Aero Snap is used. Detachment will work once. But after trying to detach it again, it exhibits the old behavior of not detaching.

Comment 39

[Jeromie Clark]

Are you on Vista or XP?

Comment 40

[Leman Bennett [Omega]]

Aero does not exist on Windows Xp. I'm using Windows 7.

Comment 41

[Jeromie Clark]

There's an application called AeroSnap, which backports this behavior to Windows Vista and Win7.  I thought you were referencing it.

I ran across a scenario where I got the window to not resize yesterday, but I wasn't sure how it happened.  This is probably what it was.  I'll dig into this more.  Thanks for the feedback.

Comment 42

[Jeromie Clark]

*backports this behavior to Windows Vista and WinXP

Comment 43

[Nick Cameron [:nrc]]

I've tried the Jeromie's new build of Flash, and it seems to work well. The resizing behaviour is as expected with both a simple test case, the test here, and a few other flash sites. I tested in Beta and Nightly on Windows 7. I could not reproduce Leman's problem with Aero Snap, I tried snapping and releasing many times and resizing still worked fine.

Comment 44

[Nick Cameron [:nrc]]

It would be nice to have a fix from the Firefox size, but that seems to be difficult. Jeromie reports that the problem is Flash releasing the Mouse Capture too early. As far as I can see, this is correct. Flash also seems to be eating our WM_CAPTURECHANGED messages, these are not filtering up to the Firefox WndProc. With Flash 11.4, we are getting these messages. So, not only is mouse capture being released early, we are not being told about it, so we can't try to grab the mouse capture ourselves (although this would be inadvisable anyway).

We already try to deal with Flash's quirky behaviour with mouse capture in full screen: http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/dom/plugins/ipc/PluginInstanceChild.cpp#1347 But for reasons I don't understand whatsoever, that method never gets a WM_LBUTTONDOWN message, so that code doesn't run. I'm not sure it would help if it did run though.

Comment 45

[x.redir]

I can see on the Adobe bugbase site that the status of this bug is shown as "Fixed" and "Closed": https://bugbase.adobe.com/index.cfm?event=bug&id=3217427

While I can't thank you enough for finally addressing this problem, I still encounter the issue, as well as all the customers that are relying on me to have a working solution for more than 2 months now.

So here is my real question: When will this be fixed for everyone? I mean, it's nice to have this fixed internally, but how people can have this fixed on their own computer as well?

Until I can simply recommend to "update flash", I will still have to continue recommending to switch to any of the other web browsers, sadly... :(

Thanks for your honest answer @Jeromie Clark

Comment 46

[Jeromie Clark]

It's in the latest patch.  11.3.300.268

Comment 47

[Nick Cameron [:nrc]]

(In reply to Jeromie Clark from comment #46)
> It's in the latest patch.  11.3.300.268

Ah, I just re-installed Flash and was pleasantly surprised, I was going to ask, but you answered already :-)

I've tested this, and it seems to work just like the internal patch - i.e., worksforme with Nightly and Release with a variety of Flash pages and doing a whole bunch of resizing, etc., including snapping.

Comment 48

[x.redir]

(In reply to Jeromie Clark from comment #46)
> It's in the latest patch.  11.3.300.268

I'm sorry but we can't seem to be able to fix this on neither of our own computers here nor for our clients.

And believe me, I have tried, I have Googled, and I have asked before coming back here to complain.

Quoted from your own documentation ( http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/help10.html#117388 ):
> How can I manually check for updates?
>> To install the latest version of Flash Player, visit the installation page. ( http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer )

When I access this page from Firefox, I seem to have the ability to download "Adobe Flash Player 11.3.300.268" (9.37 MB), however, when I do click "Download now" the "Adobe Flash Player 11.3.300.268" isn't downloaded, instead I get a small executable of 975 KB only which appears to download the Flash Player, but after trying 3 times, it never installs the correct 11.3.300.268 version, instead we always get this version: 11.3.300.265

I have tried myself on 3 different Windows 7 installations, and my colleagues were also unsuccessful in getting the fixed version.

So this is a serious question as every single day that goes by we're loosing money because of this issue: Could you PLEASE send me a link to the correct version, or even send me the entire 9.37 MB executable (through email) that would install the correct Flash Player version so we can provide it to our customers or something because right now we have seen NOTHING resulting from your work that would be able to fix this issue.

Thank you for understanding the urgency of the situation. I look forward for your reply or email.
Best

Comment 49

[Bob Clary [:bc] (inactive)]

x.redir, make sure that Firefox is not running when you update. Exit Firefox and check Task Manager to be sure. To be completely safe, I would manually uninstall Flash prior to running the updater. Note that the installer will delete itself after running so make sure you are running the latest version you just downloaded and not a previous one.

Comment 50

[Loic]

(In reply to x.redir from comment #48)
> When I access this page from Firefox, I seem to have the ability to download
> "Adobe Flash Player 11.3.300.268" (9.37 MB), however, when I do click
> "Download now" the "Adobe Flash Player 11.3.300.268" isn't downloaded,
> instead I get a small executable of 975 KB only which appears to download
> the Flash Player, but after trying 3 times, it never installs the correct
> 11.3.300.268 version, instead we always get this version: 11.3.300.265

Use these direct links:

Adobe Flash Player for Firefox, Mozilla, Netscape, Opera 11.3.300.268
http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/pdc/11.3.300.268/install_flash_player.exe

Adobe Flash Player Uninstaller 11.3.300.268
http://download.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/current/support/uninstall_flash_player.exe

Comment 51

[Keith McCade]

On a more positive note, hopefully to encourage others, I just installed the 268 Flash and FF is now resizing videos perfectly, so one happy camper, big thanks to FF's and Adobe's team.

Comment 52

[x.redir]

(In reply to Bob Clary [:bc:] from comment #49)
> x.redir, make sure that Firefox is not running when you update. Exit Firefox
> and check Task Manager to be sure. To be completely safe, I would manually
> uninstall Flash prior to running the updater. Note that the installer will
> delete itself after running so make sure you are running the latest version
> you just downloaded and not a previous one.

Thank you for the suggestion. I made sure no browser was running, and still got the wrong version installed 11.3.300.265


(In reply to Loic from comment #50)
> Use these direct links:
> 
> Adobe Flash Player for Firefox, Mozilla, Netscape, Opera 11.3.300.268
> http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/pdc/11.3.300.268/
> install_flash_player.exe
> 
> Adobe Flash Player Uninstaller 11.3.300.268
> http://download.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/current/support/
> uninstall_flash_player.exe

Thanks a lot for the links! I downloaded the first link (9.36 MB) but again we still got the old version re-installed :(

We are starting to be really desperate here at the office, and it's not just me, I speak on the behalf of about ten people most of which are developers who have actually tried again and again to get this damn fix!

If we can't get it, then neither our customers can. This is a fact.


(In reply to Keith McCade from comment #51)
> On a more positive note, hopefully to encourage others, I just installed the
> 268 Flash and FF is now resizing videos perfectly, so one happy camper, big
> thanks to FF's and Adobe's team.

Wooaa that sounds so positive and it's so energizing to read this in the morning, but could you please describe EXACTLY step by step what you did in order to get this new version installed on your system? Thanks a lot for sharing!



@Benjamin Smedberg [:bsmedberg] [away 27-July until 7-Aug]
>Status: NEW → RESOLVED
>Resolution: --- → FIXED
>Last Resolved: 2012-07-28 04:39:30

Perhaps you're away so you won't be able to answer, but as you have changed the status of this bug I believe you're still around! Also, seems like you were able to get this fixed on your computer, could you explain to the rest of us how to proceed in order to enjoy this fix? In the meantime I'm re-opening the issue as it is clearly not fixed for most people who want and who try hard to get it: Latest version of Firefox, Latest version of Flash directly from Adobe's site, but still not luck! We still get this horrible version installed 11.3.300.265! I'm personally starting to have nightmares about this number, true story!

Thank you for helping us resolving this for common people including me and senior developers at my office.
We look forward for your replies

Comment 53

[Jim Mathies [:jimm]]

This bug has nothing to do with getting the proper version of flash installed. If you feel the install problem is an issue with firefox, please file a follow up bug.

Comment 54

[Jim Mathies [:jimm]]

For confirmation purposes now that this is released, I just uninstalled adobe flash from control panel, then re-installed from the normal install site - 

http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/

In about:plugins I have:

File: NPSWF32_11_3_300_268.dll
Version: 11.3.300.268
Shockwave Flash 11.3 r300

and can confirm from the test case posted here that this bug is fixed.

Comment 55

[x.redir]

(In reply to Jim Mathies [:jimm] from comment #54)
> For confirmation purposes now that this is released, I just uninstalled
> adobe flash from control panel, then re-installed from the normal install
> site - 
> 
> http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/
> 
> In about:plugins I have:
> 
> File: NPSWF32_11_3_300_268.dll
> Version: 11.3.300.268
> Shockwave Flash 11.3 r300
> 
> and can confirm from the test case posted here that this bug is fixed.

Oh interesting, you actually need to uninstall it first completely before installing the next version, okay so we just did that from the Control Panel (I even restarted Windows to make) then installed Flash again from the normal install site (as it appears to have been working for you).

And here is the result: while I now have the correct version number in the Control Panel itself (11.3.300.268), when I check in Firefox the bug still occurs. A quick look at "about:plugins" like you suggests shows that the Flash in Firefox is different than the one in the Control Panel:

> File: NPSWF32_11_3_300_265.dll
> Version: 11.3.300.265
> Shockwave Flash 11.3 r300

Also, there are 2 occurrences of Flash in the Control Panel: one is "Adobe Flash Player 11 Plugin" (11.3.300.268) and the other is "Adobe Flash Player 11 ActiveX" which I believe is for Internet Explorer only and for which the version is 11.3.300.257 - just for information.

Right now I don't know what step to reproduce in order to address this Firefox issue, and yes this is a Firefox issue as we cannot resize the main Firefox window on many websites, including our top site which affects thousands of users every single day, and for whom we currently (and for more than two months already) recommend to switch to any other web browser, or, recently, "[...] or to try to update Flash" but which is of course a failure for most of our users including ourselves!

Installed Flash from the regular page, fully uninstalled, rebooted, re-installed, tried a version from the Macromedia site (linked above), what's next? Re-installing Windows 7?!

This is a Firefox issue, Nick Cameron was working on a workaround until Adobe came here to announce they will fix it, so now both Nick stopped to work on it and we still don't have a fix from Adobe either, so we're kind of stuck, again.

I apologize from being insistent but please do believe, we are sincerely trying to get this resolved, at least on our own computers first then in a second time for our users as well, which seems truly unfeasible at the current state.

Please accept the true and be honest with yourself, Adobe Flash 11 is working perfectly on every other web browser, including Google Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer, and the most of them: Opera, for which the Flash version is the EXACT same as the one used for Firefox! How can you still accuse Adobe for this? The exact same DLL works perfectly with Opera but completely fails with Firefox, and even breaks Firefox? This is basic observation.

I don't care to get banned for reopening this bug, for me and everybody else at my office this bug still exists and is the very same one that I have filled almost two months ago. I don't see the point of filling a follow-up bug other than tampering with statistics by getting a newer opening date and breaking the bug history/conversation.

Thank you

Comment 56

[Jim Mathies [:jimm]]

> http://avexdesigns.com/childish-gambino-getting-some-love/
> http://webdesignerwall.com/demo/elastic-videos/
> http://css-tricks.com/NetMag/FluidWidthVideo/demo.php

I don't see the problem on these web sites or the test case posted here. Can you provide links to the sites that still exhibit the problem?

Comment 57

[Jim Mathies [:jimm]]

(In reply to x.redir from comment #55)
> And here is the result: while I now have the correct version number in the
> Control Panel itself (11.3.300.268), when I check in Firefox the bug still
> occurs. A quick look at "about:plugins" like you suggests shows that the
> Flash in Firefox is different than the one in the Control Panel:
> 
> > File: NPSWF32_11_3_300_265.dll
> > Version: 11.3.300.265
> > Shockwave Flash 11.3 r300

So from this it appears you do not have the correct version of flash installed to test, which is 268. Which is why I asked you to open a follow up bug, the problem here is fixed in 268, this has been confirmed. Your issue is different, you aren't getting updated to the new plugin, correct? In which case this bug should be resolved and a new bug should be opened re your specific install issue.

Comment 58

[x.redir]

(In reply to Bob Clary [:bc:] from comment #49)
> x.redir, make sure that Firefox is not running when you update. Exit Firefox
> and check Task Manager to be sure. To be completely safe, I would manually
> uninstall Flash prior to running the updater.

Thanks for trying to help, it actually had something to do with that. We were finally successful at updating Flash! Here are the steps to follow, hopefully it could help somebody else:

1. Close any instance of Firefox
2. In Windows, open the Control Panel > Uninstall a program
3. Look for Flash and uninstall the "Plugin" variant
4. Restart your system
5. Open Firefox
6. Go to http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/ from Firefox
7. Download the suggested file – wait! don't launch it yet!
8. Open your Downloads folder and locate the executable you just downloaded
9. Close Firefox and wait a few minutes until the firefox.exe process disappear from the Windows Task Manager (Ctrl+Shift+Escape)
10. Now it's time to start the Flash installer from your Downloads folder
11. Wait until everything is done before opening Firefox again

Note: Missing step 9 will make the whole process fail — The installation dialog will display "successfully installed" but a quick check in Firefox shows no Flash plugin at all.

Note: Opening Firefox too quickly in step 11 will fail installing Flash on Firefox, but installation dialog will still shows successful install...

Also, this cumbersome procedure might possibly not be necessary if Firefox is your only browser installed and/or if it is set as the default browser. To be confirmed as I couldn't check that since we all have at least Chrome installed in parallel.


(In reply to Jim Mathies [:jimm] from comment #56)
> > http://avexdesigns.com/childish-gambino-getting-some-love/
> > http://webdesignerwall.com/demo/elastic-videos/
> > http://css-tricks.com/NetMag/FluidWidthVideo/demo.php
> 
> I don't see the problem on these web sites or the test case posted here.

For information, the problem occurs only when the YouTube videos featured in theses examples are displayed using Flash player. It might be obvious, however if you uninstall the Flash plugin entirely, the videos will still be displayed but using HTML5 and therefor the issue won't occur. Also, if you have an active Google session and have opted-in for HTML5 videos in YouTube then even if you have the Flash player plugin installed, videos might be displayed using HTML5 instead of Flash, and therefor the problem won't appear. Right-click on the video to check how is it rendered.

Even if it would be nice that Adobe offers a simpler one-click update dialog or even a transparent automatic update like offered by Google Chrome... but hey let's keep real, it would be too easy! It HAS to keep a minimum level of complexity.

And although Firefox could also have a better integration with Flash player and especially regarding the whole updating process which is very cumbersome at this point (and I'm not even speaking about simply "notifying" users to update their Flash), we can indeed mark this particular bug as fixed.

Thank you again all for your time.