Browse mode for Flash broken for IE in Windows 8

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Reported by dallasobrien on 2012-06-16 01:28
after updating to hte latest flash, i have found that after entering the object in the page, nothing is reported at all. its like its blank. some of them you can access with object nav, but not all. seems like they have broken it a little in terms of access.

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Comment 1 by briang1 on 2012-06-16 09:06
Can you give an example of a site that did work but now does not? I noted in a different ticket that the normal flash installer now won't read in windows xp. I was just wondering if they have somehow made it work in windows 7 and removed the xp support without telling anyone.

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Comment 2 by dallasobrien on 2012-06-16 10:06
i'm using windows 8,
and as for a site, pritty much every site i have gone to with some kind of flash on it does the same thing.
it enteres the object, but then you need object nav to access anything in it.

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Comment 3 by briang1 on 2012-06-16 17:42
So are you saying that windows 8 was normal with the older Flash, or is in fact this only an issue due to Windows 8 and not Flash?

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Comment 4 by dallasobrien on 2012-06-16 23:29
no, this is not normal to windows 8. it was working just fine before i updated to the latest flash. interestingly, it appears to do the same with the built in flash in internet explorer, so it would seem its a change they have made before embedding it, then they have changed what ever has been changed in the latest version.

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Comment 5 by briang1 on 2012-06-24 09:44
I saw the following advice on the support group today.
Flash player's new protected mode, apparently all the bugs aren't ironed
out of it yet. Turn it off.
Close firefox.
Open this file in notepad, file depends if you're on 32 or 64 bit:
32-bit: C:\WINDOWS\system32\macromed\Flash\mms.cfg
64-bit: C:\WINDOWS\syswow64\macromed\Flash\mms.cfg
Add this line to the end of it:

ProtectedMode = 0

Save and close. re-open Firefox and try again.

I am assuming that both versions of flash use the same configuration file, so it may well fix that also. Looking in my xp system here, I found the file using search and its where it says above.
Obviously I cannot say what happens in 64 bit systems though.

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Comment 6 by dallasobrien on 2012-06-24 14:44
i also saw this. i am not sure if this is a windows 8 problem, or a 64 bit problem, but on going to the folder specified, i do not see the indicated cfg file.
if somebody can test this in windows 7, that would be good.
i am using windows 8 rp 64 bit.

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Comment 7 by jmwalton (in reply to comment 6) on 2012-06-24 15:04
tested it here, windows 7 64bit. works after the .cfg file modification.
Replying to dallasobrien:

i also saw this. i am not sure if this is a windows 8 problem, or a 64 bit problem, but on going to the folder specified, i do not see the indicated cfg file.

if somebody can test this in windows 7, that would be good.

i am using windows 8 rp 64 bit.

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Comment 8 by briang1 on 2012-06-25 10:46
I notice this morning that I am being presented with a new release version of flash for non IE versions, but I've not looked at what might be different, so worth a look.

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Comment 9 by jteh on 2012-07-30 07:28
Dallas, is the problem you are having with IE or Firefox? If Firefox, this is a duplicate of #2546. However, in IE in Windows 8, there's a separate issue we're now aware of.

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Comment 10 by briang1 on 2012-07-30 09:41
I notice that I now have 11.4 beta on my machine here, which I don't recall downloading, so goodness knows what is going on with Flash. What is the IE issue, not noticed much problems so far, but then, I don't visit that many sites myself.
I also noted that when auto updating is set on the actual prompt screen from the new version is totally blank in XP, an I had to close it and install it manually. I do wish Adobe could get this right.

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Comment 11 by dallasobrien on 2012-07-30 21:53
hi, no, it seems to be on both IE and firefox. the latest update seems to be making it wors now, in stead of using NVDA pluss numpad3 once to jump down in to the list of controlls, its now twice you have to press it. not sure whats happening other then that.

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Comment 12 by jteh (in reply to comment 10) on 2012-07-31 01:54
Replying to briang1:

What is the IE issue

It only applies to Windows 8. In short, there's a change in Windows 8 which (hopefully) allows access to windowless plugins and Flash takes advantage of this, but unfortunately, it completely breaks our Flash code.

Technical:

• Flash is now rendered into the Ie window, so we need to add the IE window class to the list of possible Flash window classes and rely on !QueryService to detect Flash.
• The Flash content has a non-0 object id.
  • We have no proper way to communicate an object id to the backend, but we can hackily use the root id for this purpose, since the root id for Flash is always 0.
  • We'll need to add an initID=None kwarg to VirtualBuffer.__init__. If not None, this will be passed to the backend. If None, self.rootID will be used.
    Changes:
    Changed title from "latest flash not very usable with NVDA" to "Browse mode for Flash broken for Flash in Windows 8"
    Milestone changed from None to 2012.3

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Comment 13 by jteh (in reply to comment 11) on 2012-07-31 01:55
Replying to dallasobrien:

hi, no, it seems to be on both IE and firefox.

As noted above, the Firefox issue is different and is covered in #2546. I'm narrowing the scope of this ticket to the IE+Windows 8 issue.

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Comment 14 by jteh on 2012-09-12 01:59
Changes:
Changed title from "Browse mode for Flash broken for Flash in Windows 8" to "Browse mode for Flash broken for IE in Windows 8"

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Comment 16 by jteh on 2012-09-29 06:43
Bzr branch: http://bzr.nvaccess.org/win8IEFlash/

Unfortunately, while I've done most of the work and browse mode now renders, it looks like Flash is firing incorrect events, though I need to confirm this. Focusing on any element inside Flash content seems to fire focus in the HTML document. Similarly, the buffer doesn't update when there are changes like it normally does. If this is true, we can't fix this on our side.

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Comment 17 by jteh on 2012-10-09 06:27
Looks like the event bug is fixed in Windows 8 RTM. (I was running Release Preview before.)

Unfortunately, we now have another problem. It looks like Flash now assigns a different object ID to every object, rather than using child IDs. This means we can't map objects between NVDA and the virtual buffer. There may be a work around for this, but I need to discuss this with Adobe/Microsoft.

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Comment 18 by jteh on 2012-10-23 02:39
The work around for this issue will require a significant rewrite of our Flash code. This isn't possible for 2012.3.
Changes:
Milestone changed from 2012.3 to 2013.1

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Comment 19 by jteh on 2013-01-09 03:09
It looks like there will be a nicer way to fix this with Flash 11.6, which is currently in beta. It'll still require some code change in NVDA and there are some problems I'm discussing with Adobe, but there's definitely progress.

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Comment 20 by jteh on 2013-01-31 07:06
Hopefully done in 9490604. This needs a new version of Flash which isn't yet released via Windows Update. Unfortunately, even I don't have access to this yet, so this is untested. See the commit message for my reasons for merging.

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Comment 21 by elliott94 (in reply to comment 20) on 2013-01-31 08:03
Replying to jteh:

Hopefully done in 9490604. This needs a new version of Flash which isn't yet released via Windows Update. Unfortunately, even I don't have access to this yet, so this is untested. See the commit message for my reasons for merging.

Are incremental updates also downloaded this way? I've only ever used the standalone web installer which downloads an additional package and updates the plug-in (depending on which browser you've chosen to update).

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Comment 22 by jteh (in reply to comment 21) on 2013-01-31 11:37
Replying to elliott94:

Are incremental updates also downloaded this way? I've only ever used the standalone web installer which downloads an additional package and updates the plug-in (depending on which browser you've chosen to update).

As the ticket's title suggests, this only relates to IE in Windows 8, which has its own version of Flash maintained by Windows Update. Other versions of Flash use Adobe's installer.

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Comment 23 by jteh on 2013-02-15 05:50
Flash 11.6 for Windows 8 IE has now been released. There have been a few other small fixes. Everything works as of 7e2e20b.
Changes:
State: closed