According to foreign media reports, Microsoft has urged its Windows XP users to upgrade the pre-loaded Adobe Flash Player 6.0 due to multiple security flaws on Tuesday.

Microsoft has released the #979267 safety proposal to urge its users either upgrade to the latest version of Flash Player or unload the old one due to several security flaws found in the early 6.0 version.

It’s very rare that Microsoft would propose safety advice for third-party products. It does so because the Adobe Flash Player 6.0 is pre-loaded in Microsoft Windows XP and it’s necessary to remind users that Adobe had stopped supporting Flash Player 6.0 since 2006. The latest version of Flash Player is 10.0.42.34.

Microsoft’s purpose is very clear, they hope the users understand that the security flaw only occurs when the old version of flash player and old Windows are used at the same time, because the new Windows are without built-in Flash Player yet.

Microsoft said: “Adobe Flash Player 6.0 is provided at the same time with Windows XP, it contains several security flaws that may execute remote control code when browsing some specially-made webpages. Adobe has fixed those vulnerabilities in the latest Flash Player. Microsoft strongly recommends to upgrade to the latest Flash Player for those who is still using the old version of Windows XP and Adobe Flash Player 6.0.”. Nevertheless, Microsoft indicates that there is no attack found so far related to those security flaws.

This security proposal is released for Adobe Flash Player 6.0 and together with other security vulnerabilities on Tuesday. The service pack this time will affect all the Windows system, but only the Windows 2000 is catalogued to “Critical” level while other subsequent versions of Windows are put to “Low”, so the Flash issue is more important and with higher priority.

According to the foreign media reports, Firefox developer Mozilla said recently that the newly-released Firefox upgraded version with flash auto-detect mechanism has led to 10 million latest flash downloading from Adobe website in a week.

Mozilla released Firefox latest upgraded version 3.5.3 and 3.0.14 last week which perfectly fixed three critical security flaws in the previous version. In addition, in order to prevent attackers using Firefox plugin flaw to attack its users, new versions will initially detect whether the flash player that Firefox using is the latest or not.

Mitchell Baker, chairman of Mozilla, said that in the last week, about 1/3 new version users have downloaded the latest flash player from Adobe after seeing the reminding message. “User response rate is very high, usually the response rate is only 5% when they see software upgrade information.”, Mitchell said.

Mozilla security team personnel Jonathan Nightingale explains that the fact a large number of Firefox users would like to update flash player indicates the importance of network security issues. He said last week the reason why new Firefox has to detect whether the flash player it is using the latest version or not is: first, flash player is very popular; second, 80% Firefox users are still using the old version flash player according to a corresponding survey.

Adobe company also confirmed that the visitors of flash player upgrading webpage in the past week had a rapid growth. Adobe products security and privacy department director Brad Arkin appreciated the latest detecting mechanism very much by saying “For Adobe, it’s definitely a good thing for massive users to have the upgraded flash, it assures their security and we are very happy to see Mozilla sending the flash upgrading message to its users.”

P.S. You may be also interested in another blog about How to Delet Flash SWF Cache under Firefox.

Adobe Flash, with the great success in Internet field, is going to enter TV market soon. Many TV manufacturers and content distributors positively follow up to bring you different visual experience.

From computer to television, Adobe company aims to bring the excellent animations and videos into consumers’ sitting room.

Adobe has announced the release of its latest version of flash multimedia platform, which indicates flash technology has officially entered the digital home entertainment equipments like television, STB, blue player and other devices. The purpose of this TV-and-Electronics-Optimized flash version is to let viewers can enjoy HD videos, interactive applications and new user interface directly on television.

As part of the announcement, Adobe also revealed some cooperation partners of this technology, including Intel, Comcast, Disney, Atlantic Netflix, Records and the New York Times.

So far, Adobe flash player is mainly used in computers to play the animations and videos from Youtube and other similar websites in web browsers. In this market Adobe won a great success. According to the survey held by comScore, 80% online videos are displayed using Adobe flash technology.

Adobe has been developing a flash program for mobile phones before, so people can watch flash videos while moving. Now, Adobe turns its attention to the big screen of HD TVs in sitting rooms, this means people can watch YouTube videos directly on TV, and at the same time, watch their favorite TV programs as usual.

“There are some videos support TV-play recently,” director of Adobe Flash Commerce Department Murarka said, “but not all the video content is TV-friendly. For example, there are many devices can play YouTube videos, but not all the videos from Youtube.”

Developers can also develop Addons for TV to present web contents. Addon is a series of specially designed web applications that can be easily added to consumer electronics.

Yahoo already works with Intel for TV-Addons development. Through which you can have the access to Flickr, Yahoo News, Yahoo Weather, Yahoo Finance, USA Today, eBay, YouTube and ShowTime Networks. All MOTOROLA, Samsung and Toshiba have the plan to add Yahoo Addons into their televisions.

Murarka said that Yahoo is not really competing with Adobe. He pointed out that both Adobe and Yahoo are intented to cooperate with Intel, and it’s true that flash technology has also been adored by Yahoo.

“Yahoo supports desktop flash, and we hope Yahoo also supports flash on TV,” Murarka said, “we think flash is extremely valuable in some new frameworks”.

Murarka did not say which consumer electronics manufacturer will use the new version of flash platform, but for equipment manufacturers and developers, new platform is already available now. The flash-supported TV and Set-Top Boxes will come out soon later this year as well.

MURT(Multi User Real Time) web application is currently a very hot topic. The latest Google Wave even showed the very cool real-time gadget demo last month. These real-time web applications include ordinary web collaborative application, web game, various SNS(Social Networking Service) extended application and SNS game, etc.

There are two ways to realize the front-end for such applications: socket/flash or ajax. In oeder to achieve better real-time effect, ajax is gradually replaced by comet because ajax occupies too much sever resources. The sever realization usually depends on the realization of developers’ socket sever, but the sever usually has some performance and scalability problems, therefore, to realize the full function requires a lot of energy and money.

Hemlock is a new web development framework, focused on allowing easy development of real-time, many-to-many applications. It uses XMPP(Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol) MUC chatroom as backend interactive application channel, connected to XMPP sever through flash. XMPP sever like openfire, ejabberd, etc itself supports multiple severs, therefore, even the default version can support 100,000 concurrents, it won’t have a big problem either to support millions of users if it’s being optimized a little bit.

Showcases of how Hemlock applications work.

Click here to learn more about what can you do with flash.

Technologically, Microsoft Silverlight is almost on the same level with Adobe Flash, but speaking market, Microsoft Silverlight is still crawling and has a long way to go.

In the past two years, Microsoft has dedicated too much technical resources to enhance Silverlight’s performance. Now, Microsoft Silverlight can compete with Adobe Flash technologically, but still has to speed its pace to follow Adobe Flash when talking about market.

It’s true Microsoft Silverlight already has some big customers like football league, but the giant video websites like Youtube and Hulu are still using Adobe Flash. The worse, some customers, British Television ITV, for example, even abandoned Microsoft Silverlight recently and then turn to Adobe Flash immediately. The worst, even Microsoft’s own network assets such as MSN and Bing seldom use Silverlight or use it conservatively. However, this situation is changing.

Early this week, Microsoft proposed Silverlight will be used in the latest vision search function of Bing, to present searching results in a very unique visual way. The source also said later this year, MSN is expected to be redesigned using maximum Silerlight technology.

According to estimation, Adobe Flash is installed in 90% of Internet PCs, while Microsoft Silverlight only counts 1/3. For Microsoft, the existence of Adobe is just like the existence of Microsoft for other operating system companies and office software companies. Silverlight is not only in relation with how to deliver online videos in PCs but also in relation with the future network planning of Microsoft Office software, etc. What for sure is the web designers need better software to make their interfaces rich and pretty, no matter that is Microsoft Silverlight or Adobe Flash.

Both Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight are required to be installed before watching videos online. And the current situation is most video websites use Adobe Flash due to its popularity and accordingly, most users choose Adobe Flash. This cause-and-effect relation is the key for Microsoft to increase the share of Silverlight.

Adrian Ludwig, the Group Manager of Adobe Flash said: “A few years ago, Adobe was very very nervous when gigantic Microsoft entering this field with Silverlight.”

But recently, Adobe Flash has relaxed vigilance by saying : “I begin to doubt whether Microsoft Silverlight will be as popular as Adobe Flash and whether it will satisfy the demand of the market as Adobe Flash does.”

Executives of Microsoft immediately respond: “The Silverlight customers are rising, especially after the release of the 3rd version. This version supports auto-negotiable adjust the video resolution and uninterrupted video playback according to network status.”