Managing the Flash plugin

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The Adobe Flash Player browser plugin lets you view video and animated content in Firefox.

Note: The Firefox Software Update feature does not update installed plugins. See the Adobe Security bulletins and advisories page for information about security and stability issues affecting Adobe Flash Player and other Adobe products.

Table Of Contents

Testing Flash

Visit Adobe's Test Page to see if the Flash plugin is installed and working properly. If it tells you that Flash is not installed, install Flash using the instructions at Installing the Flash plugin.

Updating Flash

To check if your installation of Flash is up to date, visit Mozilla's Plugin Check page. If it says that Flash needs to be updated, install the latest version manually.

Windows:
  1. Go to Flash Player download page at Adobe.com and download the Flash installer.
  2. From the menu at the top of the Firefox windowbar, select FileFirefox and then select the ExitQuit FirefoxQuit menu item.
  3. Open the file you downloaded (i.e. install_flash_player.exe), then follow the installer's instructions.

Mac OS:
  1. Go to Flash Player download page at Adobe.com and download the Flash installer.
  2. From the menu at the top of the Firefox windowbar, select FileFirefox and then select the ExitQuit FirefoxQuit menu item.
  3. Open the file you downloaded (i.e. install_flash_player_osx_ub.dmg).
  4. In the Finder, open the Adobe Flash Player.pkg to run the installer, then follow the installer's instructions.

Linux:
  1. Go to Flash Player download page at Adobe.com.
  2. When prompted, save the file install_flash_player_10_linux.tar.gz.
  3. From the menu at the top of the Firefox windowbar, select FileFirefox and then select the ExitQuit FirefoxQuit menu item.
  4. Open a Terminal window (in Gnome, click on the Applications menu, select Accessories, and then select Terminal.)
  5. In the Terminal window, change to the directory where you saved the file you downloaded (e.g. cd /home/user/Downloads).
  6. Extract libflashplayer.so from file you downloaded with the command tar -zxvf install_flash_player_10_linux.tar.gz.
  7. As the super user, copy the extracted file, libflashplayer.so, to your Firefox installation directory's plugins sub-directory. For example, if Firefox is installed in /usr/lib/mozilla, use the command sudo cp libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins and then enter your super user password when prompted.

Windows:

Uninstalling Flash

For instructions on uninstalling Flash, see How to uninstall the Adobe Flash Player at Adobe.com.

Troubleshooting

Windows:

Flash works in Internet Explorer but not in Firefox

There are two different types of Flash Players: An ActiveX version for Internet Explorer and a plugin version for Firefox and other browsers. If you want Flash to work in Firefox you must install the plugin version, as explained above.

Flash-based video or audio does not play or stops after a few seconds

Please see: Flash-based videos and sound do not play correctly

Windows:

Flash does not work properly and/or will not update

Sometimes it is possible for Firefox to have two different versions of the Flash plugin installed. This can cause the following types of problems:

  • Flash content does not work, acts strangely, or causes errors. (This is due to an old version of Flash being used to play content that requires the latest version of Flash.)
  • Installation of the latest version of Flash apparently fails, even though the Flash installer returned no errors and seemed to work fine. (The old version of Flash has priority over the new version, and the Flash installer failed to remove the old version.)

To find out how many versions of Flash you have installed:

  1. At the top of the Firefox window, click the Tools menu and select Add-ons. The Add-ons window will open.
  2. In the Add-ons window, select the Plugins panel to display a list of installed plugins.
  3. Count how many times the "Shockwave Flash" heading appears.

If the "Shockwave Flash" heading appears more than once, then you have more than one version of the Flash plugin installed. In this case you must remove one copy of the Flash plugin, and perhaps reinstall the latest version. To do this:

  1. Exit Firefox. From the menu at the top of the Firefox window, select File and then select the Exit menu item.
  2. Find your Firefox installation folder. (Typically C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\)
  3. Navigate into the \plugins\ folder.
  4. Delete the file called NPSWF32.dll.
  5. Start Firefox.
  6. Open the Add-ons window, and select the Plugins panel.
  7. Ensure only one “Shockwave Flash” heading appears.
  8. Visit the Flash Test Page to ensure you are on the latest version. See the Testing Flash section above.

Flash content shows as question mark

See Flash content shows as question mark.




Based on information from Flash (mozillaZine KB)


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Page last modified on Thursday 11 of February, 2010 19:36:43 PST.
Contributors to this page: Chris_Ilias , cor-el , TMZ , Aleksej , Bo , Cww , underpass , Tony-Mechelynck , AliceWyman , stevee , djstsys , np , skulvis , Vectorspace and Thomas .
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