Impact of end of life of adobe flash and shockwave

[Ramachandran]

Hello Chris,
In my product, flex based UI compotents are loaded through flash player via DJ Native Swing library. JFlashPlayer is used. But, Adobe has already announced the EOL of flash and shockwave and EOL is set at 2020 as per their announcement. In this case, will it impact the Native library? Is there any plan to support or provide some fix from DJ's level to keep the existing applications running fine?

[Christopher Deckers]

Hi Ramachandran,

JFlashPlayer in DJ NativeSwing is a browser-based component. It means that it loads a native web browser (IE on Windows), loads the Flash plugin and makes the integration as smooth as possible.

I am not sure what EOL means in this context: as long as the plugin is present on the machine and that IE (or just its rendering engine?) is still there, then this integration works.

If one of these native components break, there is little that DJ NativeSwing can do to fix it.

Hope this helps,
-Christopher

[Ramachandran]

Thanks Chris for the response.
Regarding EOL,
Please check https://community.adobe.com/t5/flash-player/flash-player-end-of-life/td-p/10206952?page=1
https://theblog.adobe.com/adobe-flash-update/

what I understood about EOL is, Adobe will stop updating and distributing flash player by end of 2020 it seems. So, it wont allow downloading the software later. Also, all the browsers wont allow running flash player with them after 2020.
As you mentioned, if native web browser uses IE on windows, it will affect the applications which uses native swing library i feel.

"If one of these native components break, there is little that DJ NativeSwing can do to fix it." - From this statment, you mean the issue can be fully handled at the DJ NativeSwing itself to fix it? So, the applications wont require any change and just a upgrade of DJ library? Please clarify.

[Ramachandran]

You have already answered my questions i think. In this case of EOL, DJ NativeSwing cannot do much is what you meant.

[Christopher Deckers]

As long as IE is present on the machine, I guess it is possible to install the latest Flash plugin and it would work. But of course, no guaranty.

[Ramachandran]

Chris,
I have few more queries on this topic.

1. To test my application with flash plugin disabled, what i tried is, i disabled flash object in IE browser (and in chrome also). But, even after doing so, my application with flex components were loaded fine without any issues. In this case, how the module actually loads flash player and from where?
2. Second thing is, when i checked the JFlashPlayer.java code, i could see the code actually loads some parameters like below:
   objectHTMLConfiguration.setWindowsClassID("D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000"); objectHTMLConfiguration.setWindowsInstallationURL("http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,0,0");
   objectHTMLConfiguration.setMimeType("application/x-shockwave-flash");
   objectHTMLConfiguration.setInstallationURL("http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer");
   objectHTMLConfiguration.setWindowsParamName("movie");
   objectHTMLConfiguration.setParamName("src");

      Does it mean, the NativeSwing library downloads flash player on the fly and uses it for loading flex components?
   

[Ramachandran]

Hi Chriss,
Did you get a chance to look at my queries above? Can you please provide some valuable suggestions?

[Christopher Deckers]

Hi,

i disabled flash object in IE browser

There are two instances of IE: the 64-bit version and the 32-bit one. If your JVM is 32-bit (using the 32-bit swt library), then you are using the 32-bit version.
I am not sure, but maybe you disabled the plugin in the wrong instance.

Second thing is, when i checked the JFlashPlayer.java code, i could see the code actually loads some parameters

This was the standard way of declaring a Flash object. I have no idea how IE reacts to these, but this is IE knowledge which you can probably find on Internet. What I can say is that this URL seems to work:
http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,0,0
If IE downloads the Flash plugin automatically, and if Flash reaches EOL, then maybe the above URL will stop working.

Hope this helps,
-Christopher

[Ramachandran]

Thanks Chriss. This helps. I will check the points you mentioned.

[Ramachandran]

Chriss,
I have few more queries.
1. We are trying to modify the DJNative library based on our need. Currently, our product uses 0.9.9.20101112 version of DJNative library. But, i could find the same version's source code in the portal. Can you suggest if i can download the same version from somewhere?
2. Basically, we are trying to use google chrome browser instead of default IE browser to pick adobe flash plugin from underline. In 0.9.9.20101112 version, it handles default, XULRunner and Webkit. I dont see it handles google chrome. Is it possible to modify the code accordingly to achieve this? How complex the change will be?
3. When i use the latest DJ version (1.0.1) with my product, i get this below error. what it the version compatibility it talks about?
'The version of SWT that is required is 4.3 or later!'

regards
Ram

[Christopher Deckers]

Hi Ram,

1. The zip file containing the distribution also contains the sources. But it is unlikely to be of any use to solve your problem (see answer to point 2. below).
2. In order to include a native web browser, DJ Native Swing requires 3 parts: the API with native interactions with a web browser, the integration framework to include this API in Swing and a nice web browser API in a Swing component. The first part is not developped by DJ Native Swing but by SWT (the native toolkit used by eclipse). If SWT does not support Chrome, DJ Native Swing cannot integrate it in Swing.
3. As mentioned in point 2., DJ Native Swing uses the SWT library (swt.jar). Upgrading DJ Native Swing may require a more recent version of SWT.

An initiative at eclipse was trying to develop a Chrome-based version of their Browser component. I don't know how far they are with that but I don't think it is production ready. If that were done, DJ Native Swing could theoretically use it.

Hope this helps,
-Christopher

[Ramachandran]

Ok. One more query is, the current DJ library supports WEBKIT engine right. I tried to use it by installing Safari browser in my machine and provided the option with 'Webkit runtime' parameter to JFlashPlayer while running my application. But it throws the error in UI (pls check the attached screen shot for error). can you suggest what could be the issue and how to resolve it?

regards
Ram