Adobe Flash, Shockwave, and Oracle Java on XP (Part 2)

[Humming Owl]

It also works on 360EE v9 and v12 on WinXP SP3 32bits and Win7 SP1 32bits. Installing the NPAPI flavor of Flash copying the "NPSWF32_34_0_0_192.dll" file into the "plugins" folder of the browser also works very well.

I hadn't read the last comments of this thread so I am a little surprised that there is a developer posting newer versions of Flash.

Cheers.

[Mathwiz]

Now that the two of you mention it, that makes sense. Flash v34 is targeted at China, and 360EE is a Chinese browser, so it's reasonable that it allows Flash to run without nags! And of course it's the only remotely recent Chromium-based browser that runs on XP.

As some of you are aware, I also use Win 7, which can run "straight" Chromium 87 (but which unfortunately contains the aforementioned nags). I'll check the Win 7 forum for answers, but for some reason, it's not as well-populated with experts as the XP forum.

[Mathwiz]

20 hours ago, Humming Owl said:

I am a little surprised that there is a developer posting newer versions of Flash.

I would probably phrase it as, a developer un-crippling newer versions of Flash. It's still Adobe releasing them, but they're region-restricted to only run in China, and of course they have all the China-mandated spyware. Darktohka is stripping all that out so the rest of the world can use the updated (and presumably more secure, although who really knows) versions.

But it's still Adobe's copyrighted product, and legally, they have the right to say "no" to what darktohka is doing. You'd think they wouldn't care - if folks are that determined to keep using their free product, why not let them - but maybe they made an agreement with the other members of the "Anti-Flash" consortium (chiefly Google, I suspect) to do everything they can to keep this old, not particularly secure, but popular browser plug-in dead & buried outside of China.

[VistaLover]

2 hours ago, Mathwiz said:

It's still Adobe releasing them

Technically, they're being distributed by Zhongcheng, the exclusive and official distributor of Adobe Flash Player (in mainland China):

Quote

Copyright © 2021 Zhongcheng Network Technology Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved

The form of distribution has shifted recently to an AIO executable called Flash Center: 

https://www.flash.cn/english

(links to FlashCenter_Setup_1.0.6.43_silent_10001.exe)

Individual plugin installers (be it only stub, i.e. on-line) are linked on:

https://www.flash.cn/download-wins

but unsure whether they'll be phased out completely, in favour of Flash Center...

Due to the spyware nature of these Chinese Flash products, several recent filter lists (e.g. inside uBO) will flag "www.flash.cn/*" URIs as malicious and block them from loading in the browser...

[Mathwiz]

On 10/15/2021 at 2:06 PM, Mathwiz said:

Link for github-wc-polyfill: https://github.com/JustOff/github-wc-polyfill/releases/download/1.2.5/github-wc-polyfill-1.2.5.xpi

Note well @VistaLover's mention of UXP. This is only compatible with UXP-based browsers: PaleMoon/New Moon/MyPal 28 (for New Moon, you need to go into the .xpi archive with 7-Zip and modify install.rdf to specify 28.10 vs. 28.14 as the MinVersion), Basilisk/Serpent 52.9, and SeaMonkey 2.49.5 2.53 (which doesn't work on Win XP). I'm unsure if it can be modified to work on FF 52.9 or Serpent 55.

Github-wc-polyfill seems to work with Serpent 55, at least, although as mentioned in the "Multiprocess Mode" thread, only in single-process mode. (I have a single-process mode profile for just this sort of situation.) And again, you need to modify install.rdf to allow version 52.9 through 55.* to be installed.

Edit: Spoke too soon. With GitHub, some things work but several are still broken with Serpent 55. GitLab doesn't really work at all. Same goes for FF 52.9.1 and FF 53.

Edited October 19, 2021 by Mathwiz

[bluebolt]

[VistaLover]

34.0.0.201 is a pre-release/beta build; the official Chinese Flash distributor still advertises 32.0.0.192 as the latest stable/recommended release...

[VistaLover]

On 11/1/2021 at 9:00 PM, VistaLover said:

34.0.0.201 is a pre-release/beta build; the official Chinese Flash distributor
still advertises 32.0.0.192 as the latest stable/recommended release...

Yesterday (Nov 9th, 2021), the Chinese Flash distributor released officially v34.0.0.201 to its (Chinese) users: 

[Mathwiz]

It may be some time before we can get a "clean" version of .201: See Darktohka's note at https://gitlab.com/cleanflash/installer

So to me it looks like to get around the DMCA, he's reworking the installer to download (and perhaps install) "dirty" Flash (presumably from www.flash.cn), then patch it to clean it up, rather than providing an installer with Adobe's copyrighted code built in. I wish him luck.

But until then, .192 is working fine (and nag-free) in all my Win XP and Win 7 browsers (including 360EE) except of course ChrEdge on 7.

[bluebolt]

[Destro]

is there any usecase scenario for still running flash.  i haven't run into any lately.

[Tripredacus]

Just to play old flash content. There are some CDs that use Flash so archivists would still need it, or people who are just going through old CDs.

[RainyShadow]

Some collections of (old) car documents/schematics/etc. use it for the frontend.

[Mathwiz]

And there are a lot of games that were written to use Flash that some still like to play.

To be fair, with Flash's long-anticipated "official" demise, almost everything on the Web was rewritten, as was any new software. So your odds of needing it in a modern browser are low.

[Mathwiz]

On 11/20/2021 at 9:32 PM, Mathwiz said:

It may be some time before we can get a "clean" version of .201: See Darktohka's note at https://gitlab.com/cleanflash/installer

So to me it looks like to get around the DMCA, he's reworking the installer to download (and perhaps install) "dirty" Flash (presumably from www.flash.cn), then patch it to clean it up, rather than providing an installer with Adobe's copyrighted code built in. I wish him luck.

But until then, .192 is working fine (and nag-free) in all my Win XP and Win 7 browsers (including 360EE) except of course ChrEdge on 7.

Clean Flash Installer version 34.0.0.211 is now available at https://gitlab.com/cleanflash/installer/-/releases/. Confirmed working on Windows XP.

Don't forget you need JustOff's GitHub-wc-polyfill add-on installed to access GitLab from a UXP browser; also Serpent 52 must be in single-process mode. 360EE should work without issue.