The UKanDo viewer version 4.0 has released. When going to download it I noticed their note that Flash won’t work with this viewer, unless you take some special steps. This is because v4.0 viewers have changed from older web tech, Webkit, to the newer Chromium Embedded Framework.

Visit Winter Wonderland in Second Life

There is a lot of stuff on the grid that uses flash. So, if you need to display Flash in the viewer go to this Linden article: How to use Adobe Flash in Second Life Viewer 4.0 and later.

The page starts off by saying:

Starting with Second Life Viewer 4.0, the internal web browser of the Second Life Viewer has been updated to use the Chromium Embedded Framework.  This allows content creators to use a much wider array of web technologies in their products for Second Life, including Adobe Flash.  However, in order to use Flash in the Second Life Viewer, you must first install a specific version of the Adobe Flash Player on your computer.

I will stress that the steps must be accomplished using the viewer’s INTERNAL web browser.

I’ll also point out adding Flash creates a security risk. Flash files can contain extensive scripting and thus are a primary attack vector for computer crackers. Further along the list of reasons to abandon the use of Flash is many in the programming community consider Flash DEAD. (References) In September of this year (2015) Google disabled Flash in the Chrome browser (v42). They also removed Flash banner ads from their money cow AdWords^®. They didn’t kick out all Flash advertisers, they provide a Flash to HTML5 converter and I think they use it to convert existing Flash ads on the fly. So, you may think you are still seeing Flash banner ads, but not really.

Adobe knows Flash is on the way out. They provide a way to save Flash projects as HTML5. Several Adobe products provide HTML5 file formats too. Scripting/programming of apps on web pages is not going away. Thus, for now the Flash Professional CC application remains an Adobe product. They are transforming it into an app for building mobile applications. I expect Adobe to change the Flash name at some point.

Google will likely remove the ability to upload Flash file format FLV to YouTube. FLV is Flash’s video streaming file format.

I believe Project Sansar will omit any support for Flash.

Recommendation

I recommend you NOT install the Flash plug-in in your viewer. If you have SL things that use Flash, it is time to replace them. Think of it like buying virus protection.

Besides we have had problems with Flash in SL for a long time now. Many SL devices that use Flash stopped working long ago.

When buying things in SL that show movies or play audio, make sure they DO NOT use Flash. I took a quick tour through the market place to see how easy or hard that would be. I did not find a maker that says whether they use Flash or not, I didn’t look at that many…

My quick conclusion is the better designers are providing an in-world demo. So just like mesh, only buy if you can see a demo. Several designers provide an in-world location where you can test your viewer and make sure their product works for you. Don’t expect that because they offer the demo it works… It may not work on your hardware or it may be an OLD demo that works in v3 viewers.

Be aware that some TV’s and video players use Media On A Prim (MOAP – More often referred to as Shared Media). Those items will work until you run into content on the web that uses Flash, which is partly why the Lab explained how to get Flash working in v4.0 viewers and later. Those that use this style of tech are usually very cheap, like L$10 or 50… depending on what you want to watch, these can be ok.

UKanDo

I tried the latest release of UKanDo. I find I crash a lot using it. But, I crash a lot right now. I have 2 v4.0 viewers and several v3.? and all of them are crash prone. That includes FS 4.7.5. I just saw my computer update to NVIDIA 361.something. So, today I’ll see if that helped. Otherwise, I may just need a new computer.