flash switcher

Flash Switcher for Windows, OSX and Linux

Alessandro Crugnola firefox , , , , ,

With the upcoming release of Firefox 3 I thought I had to verify my extensions to see if they work with the new Firefox version too.
For the first version of flash switcher I did two different extensions for Windows and Mac. That was a problem for maintenance.

This time I wrote the extension from scratch and I decided to make it as much as cross platform as possible. Moreover I wanted to make the installation of new plugins easier than in the previous version of flash switcher extension ( where you had to copy manually the plugin file into the extension’s directory.. ).

Thus now this extension works ( at least with my tests and people who tested it ) with Windows, OSX and Linux. Specifically it has been tested on:

  • Windows XP
  • Ubuntu linux 8.04
  • OSX Leopard and Tiger

Also the installation of new plugins now it’s easy. Just click on the installed flash plugin and click “save”. Well, I think it’s quite easy 🙂

The only issue with the new extension is that it’s quite big because it comes with 2 flash versions for every OS platform. So it’s about 14Mb.

I also did a couple of video to show how it currently works on different platforms. Currently there are 2 videos (ubuntu and osx usage).

Flash switcher Ubuntu
flash switcher osx

In order to use this extension ( if you want to try it ) you need Firefox 3.
P.S. If you want to add more flash players to the extension, download and install the version you want from the flash player archive page.
Once a new flashplayer has been installed onto your system you can save it into your flash switcher archive using the “save as” menu item of the flash switcher.

Install flash switcher

Flash Switcher extension updated

Alessandro Crugnola firefox , , ,

Yesterday I updated my previous flash switcher extension due to some changes in the latest release of Firefox 2.0.3 which caused the extension to stop working.
Moreover Adobe continues to change the path of the flash player installation dir.. because of this you should first uninstall your current flash player before using this extension.
The Flash player uninstaller is available here.

I’ve also included a brief help on how-to add more player versions available for this extension. Just open the ‘help’ menu item from the extension’s menu.

What

I’ve tested both on my Windows Vista business and Windows XP and it seems to work correctly, but feel free to report bugs to me..
Actuallt i’ve included these flash player versions:

  • 4.0 r28
  • 6.0 r79
  • 7.0 r63
  • 8.0 r24
  • 9.0 r28
  • 9.0 r45

What’s flash switcher?
Flash switcher is a Firefox extension (the icon will be installed in the right status bar of your browser) which lets you to switch between various flash player versions without using uninstallers/installers.

This new version is available only for Firefox 2.0.3 and above.

Download the Flash switcher extension.
Be sure to uninstall all previous flash switcher extensions from firefox before install this new one

Flash Switcher for OSX

Alessandro Crugnola firefox , , , , ,

After the many requests of a mac OSX version of my last Firefox plugin I finally was able to create it.
I have to say I had much more difficulties rather than the one for Windows.
For what I could understand Firefox for Windows unload the NPSWF32.dll once there are no pages displaying an swf. In fact (under windows) before switching plugin I have to be sure there are no pages wih an swf within, then I can clear the dll and copy the new one.

Instead Firefox for OSX  doesn’t unload the Flash Player.plugin even when there are no flash contents. For that reason I could not delete the current plugin file, so I decided to first move the running plugin into Trash and then copy the new one in the Internet Plug-ins folder and then ask user to restart Firefox. In this way everything seems to work clean.

Another problem is the fact there are 2 different plugin file for mac Intel and mac PPC. So I had to create 2 different .xpi installers.
Many thanks to Gabriele Farina who help me with this, I completely forgot the fact there were 2 different installer under Mac.

Here the installers (btw, I’m not 100% sure they will work.. a better test should be done):

Flash Switcher for Firefox

P.S. Another thing regarding my recent interest on Firefox plugin development.
This morning Jesse Stratford mailed me saying he wrote an article about me (yeas, about me! ooh what a great honor):
http://www.actionscript.org/../Firefox-Plugins-for-Flash-Platform-Developers/

Flash Switcher extension for Firefox

Alessandro Crugnola firefox , , ,

I just did this new extension (my third extension) for Mozilla firefox. I hope it can be useful for Flash developer who want to easily test their pages with different flash player versions.
The extension hasn’t been approved yet by the Mozilla developer extension team so I decided to make first a post here, also for let you to test it and also because last time they took 3 weeks before they approve an extension…

What is this extension?
This extension comes with all the currently published flash player plugins (from the version 2 to the most recent 9,0,16) and allows you to easily switch from one plugin to another, or also to remove the currently installed plugin (maybe for testing the express install).

Where I can find it?
Once installed you will find the “flash switcher” icon in the Firefox statusbar at right. Click on it and a list of available options will appear.

Can I add more flashplayer versions?
Yes, even if you should do it manually.
The extensionn folder can be found here:

C:\{userAppData}\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\{userProfile}\extensions\{2b5cfade-d133-429c-aea5-865911de4e1d}

Into the “chrome\plugins” folder you will see different folder (such as 9.0 r16, 8.0 r24 etc) with a file NPSWF32.dll within.
To install a new plugin just create a new folder with the name of the player version and copy into it the NPSWF32.dll file which comes with every flash player installer.
You can find all the old flash versions here
Another way to add more versions of the player is to install the flashplayer version you want into firefox, then save it using the “save as” menu item of flash switcher.

Download and install flash switcher here.