The biggest change for users is the Control Panel integration in Windows (I think OS X and Linux are concerned too) - yes, after more than ten versions Flash finally uses a native settings dialog.
This release addresses an issue with hardware acceleration on some systems with Intel HD Graphics adapters when viewing SWF content in Internet Explorer 9. With Flash Player 10.3.181.14 installed, SWF content appears in the upper-left corner of the screen. A full detailed description can be viewed by the Knowledge Base support article.
For once, Filehippo still has the old (10.3.181.14) installer.
Correction: Filehippo actually redirects to the Adobe download server (fpdownload.macromedia.com), so it really downloads the latest available version.
Correction: Filehippo actually redirects to the Adobe download server (fpdownload.macromedia.com), so it really downloads the latest available version.
I found that out when trying to find a previous version that didn't have graphic glitches with some NVIDIA cards but gave up since it will only download the latest version, and didn't want to download some gargantuan huge ZIP package that Adobe offers with multiple versions for testing. The glitches have thankfully been fixed.
A quick Google suggests Google Chrome is deeply affected - I was not planning to use that anyway.
I do use Firefox I see that NPAPI could be used in Plugins.
How can I tell which plugins are safe and free from NPAPI ?
Regards
Alan
NPAPI, or "Netscape Plugin API", is what all non-IE browsers use as their plugin model.
Just like ActiveX, it's compiled native code. The only difference being the fact NPAPI can only be used in a browser (ActiveX controls can be used out of IE)
Firefox sandboxes QuickTime, Silverlight and Flash (I don't think Java is sandboxed yet), but they don't remove their privileges IIRC - the sandbox's purpose is to avoid crashes (*cough* Flash *cough*).
Chrome sandboxes Flash (but only the version that comes with it) aggressively - no write access and no read acces.
IE sandboxes all ActiveX controls, but read access to the whole drive is enabled to avoid breaking compatibility with some older controls.
Other browsers don't do anything at all.
The main problem with ActiveX compared to NPAPI is that IE has a greater marketshare ; also, a website which needs a specific ActiveX control can give the URL to download it and IE will ask the user if he wants to download the control, which might be used to trick the user into downloading a malicious ActiveX (this is less common now that they are sandboxed). Other browsers don't allow this.
Google has been working on "Pepper", a NPAPI evolution, for a while. I doubt it will be used though (backwards compatibility... )
New flash is version 10.3.181.26... same version number for all browsers.
They seriously need an auto-update feature (perhaps a standalone app), because it's seriously becoming a pain in the @ss uninstalling then installing new versions, especially when they're released so much sooner now.