Flash 9 Security Update Verification
Jesse Harding posted this on his blog yesterday on how to verify if a user has the Flash 9 security update…really solid. So solid I thought I blog it. Jesse’s article here.
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I mashed up some existing frameworks out there to create an alert that displays on your web site if your visitors don’t have the latest version of the Flash player (9.0.124.0). It is highly recommended that all web users install the latest version of the player due to exploits possible in the previous version.
You can see an example of my alert here.
(for testing purposes I requiring Flash 11 here so everyone should get the alert for the time being)
Download the files for my script here.
The zip file download has a readme.txt file that explains how to use the script in detail. I’ll give a brief summary here:
My hack uses swfobject and a jQuery Thickbox together to display a very noticeable alert.
Normally swfobject is great for verifying the most recent version, but considering the urgent nature of this update, I combined it with a Thickbox as the alert to make sure it is very visible.
The way I did this was somewhat sneaky. Rather than point to the expressInstall.swf file that swfobject usually defaults to when flash is out of date, I pointed to my own thickBoxWarning.swf which uses ExternalInterface to launch the Thickbox.
If for whatever reason you want to go without the Thickbox simply remove the reference to thickBoxWarning.swf in the swfobject code and you’ll get a standard swfobject warning banner at the top of your site.
Here is an example of what that looks like.
Basically all you need to do to use this is place the flashSecurity folder on your server. The paths in these examples assume your flashSecurity folder is in the same folder as your web pages. If this is not the case, you’ll need to update the paths in the code appropriately. You may also need to change the path to the Thickbox window which is set in the included thickBoxWarning.fla file. Add a couple divs to the top of your page (there are examples in the zip) and you are good to go.
This is a very simple but effective way to protect your users and ensure they are aware of the update.
If you have any questions on this email me at jesse AT frogblade.com
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