[Bug 161818] Re: firefox flash-plugin automatic installation fails on youtube

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

** Description changed:

  Problem occurs with:
  * Ubuntu 8.04 LTS
  * Ubuntu 9.04
  * Ubuntu Karmic, all updates installed
  
  1. From a fresh Ubuntu installation, go to <http://www.youtube.com/>.
  2. Go to any of the videos.
  
  What happens: "Hello, you either have JavaScript turned off or an old version of Adobe's Flash Player. Get the latest Flash player."
  What should happen: Firefox's plug-in finder bar appears.
  
  Sites like YouTube query firefox about the availability of the flash
- plugin, and if not found, redirect the user to a proprietary "download
- adobe flash" page, instead of serving the page with the flash object
- which would trigger the automatic flash installation.
+ plugin, and if not found, display fallback text (usually including a
+ link to Adobe's download page) instead of triggering the browser's
+ native <embed> behavior for uninstalled plug-ins. This is usually
+ implemented using the Adobe Flash Player Detection Kit
+ <http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/download/detection_kit/> and,
+ more recently, SWFObject <http://code.google.com/p/swfobject/>.
+ SWFObject will be included in upcoming versions of Adobe Flash Catalyst
+ and Adobe Flash Builder. and as of 1 October 2009, it was used by around
+ 13% of Web site front pages sampled by Builtwith.
+ <http://trends.builtwith.com/?tag=javascript&tech=b9f773e8-12b1-46ee-
+ ab08-bafa6c8d0c6f>
+ 
+ Ubuntu's plug-in finder bar works only for <embed> elements, and
+ therefore it is working for fewer and fewer Flash sites over time.
  
  A simple solution might be to hack firefox to always provide the
  information that the flash capability is present, even when the flash
  plugin is not yet installed. Therefore, the site would provide the flash
  object, and the automatic flash plugin installation would kick in.
- 
- More details in the discussion at http://lwn.net/Articles/256641/#Comments
- Some quotes:
- "Firefox Extension Issues
- 
- Posted Nov 1, 2007 18:40 UTC (Thu) by madscientist (subscriber, #16861) [Link]
- http://lwn.net/Articles/256788/
- 
- If you visit a site with flash and you don't have a flash plugin available, then the 7.10
- version of Ubuntu Firefox will offer to download and install the Ubuntu plugin.  I've seen
- this work: you get a nice little dialog asking you if you want to use the non-free Adobe
- plugin, or the new GNU flash plugin.  It then asks for your password (for sudo) and installs
- using the graphical installer.  All is goodness and magic.
- ...
- Unfortunately, all is not ALWAYS goodness.  In the flash plugin case, the problem is that some
- websites can detect that you don't have the correct plugin and if they do, they'll throw up
- their OWN "install flash" site; that's what YouTube does and that's what you ran into.  This
- obviously does not use Ubuntu's package installer, since you're installing from Adobe.  It's
- not clear how Ubuntu could solve this, because Firefox makes a request for the page and the
- page that comes back makes no mention of wanting to run a flash applet; rather it contains a
- button to install flash from Adobe.  Maybe Firefox could be set to "cheat" and reply that it
- does have flash available, even if that plugin was not installed, so that servers would serve
- up flash content rather than suggesting you install the plugin.  The bad news is that probably
- 75% of the flash-enabled sites I use now have this special "install the plugin" code.  I
- actually had to wander the web for quite a while looking for sites that contained flash but
- DIDN'T have this special handling, so I could see the new Firefox automatic plugin install."

-- 
firefox flash-plugin automatic installation fails on youtube
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/161818
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