Flash Update Causing Problems for Firefox Fans

If you’ve been having trouble watching Flash movies in Firefox, you’re not alone.

Last week A

dobe released Flash Player 11.3, with support for secure sandboxing in Firefox. Flash’s near ubiquity makes it a popular target for web-based attacks, but the new sandboxing means that even when such attacks succeed the damage is limited and won’t spill over into the rest of the browser or even the operating system.

Unfortunately for some Firefox fans, the Flash 11.3 update has also caused numerous problems.

Webmonkey has received quite a bit of email from users over the last few days, reporting everything from videos that won’t play to screen freezes and outright browser crashes. Most of the problems seem to affect Windows Vista and Windows 7 users, which suggests the new security sandboxing might be part of the problem.

The problem is widespread enough that Mozilla has addressed it directly, telling users that the company isworking with Adobe to fix it.

In the mean time the only real solution is to downgrade to Flash 11.2. If you happen to have Real Player installed there is a more extensive workaround, but for everyone else Mozilla’s suggestion is to “uninstall Flash 11.3 and downgrade to Flash 11.2.” The Firefox Help Center has instructions for those with Real Player installed as well as those whose only option is to return to the more stable Flash 11.2.

We’ll be sure to let you know when a better solution is available.

Sourse:webmonkey