How to Fix the WordPress Upload Issue with Flash Player 10

November 4, 2008 at 8:00 am · Filed under Flash, PHP, Tech, Web Apps

If you work with WordPress 2.6 or before and have recently installed Flash Player 10, then you probably realized that the upload dialog box has stopped working. This is due to a security update the Adobe made in the latest version of the Flash Player.

I have seen a lot of people complaining about this (and Adobe has responded really well and explained their solid reasoning), but the fix is actually really simple and takes only two minutes to install. Just download the ZIP file mentioned in this blog comment on WordPress.org, copy the included files over your current installation, and you'll be all set. The fix includes a new version of SWFUpload, which is used on the WordPress upload page in the admin panel.

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Keith Peters said,

November 4, 2008 @ 8:48 am

Yes, there is a fix and it’s relatively simple, but to put it in perspective, my blog post originally complaining about this was in mid-August. The SWFUpload fix came out last week. So for more than 2 months, it was broken with no available fix other than switching to browser upload and uploading one file at a time, or going back to Flash 9.

Jon MacDonald said,

November 4, 2008 @ 9:30 am

Keith – I’m by no means saying that a solution couldn’t have been worked out by Adobe well ahead of the release of FP10. A good number of people realized this would be an issue, even in August well before the final version of FP10 was released, and as such Adobe could have proactively offered to help fix the problem.

However, I still feel that post-release when us developers made an issue of it, Adobe team members such as Lee Brimelow did a decent job of stepping up to the plate and figuring out why no one at Adobe had worked with WordPress, Flickr or the like to solve the issue. And, from what I read, they have recognized it was/is an issue and have since been working to help solve it. Hopefully they learn from their mistake and don’t let this happen again in the future.

Either way, my post was more to help inform that there is a now solution, albeit one that should have been released ahead of time and is still buried in quite a few comments on WordPress’s development blog.

Keith Peters said,

November 4, 2008 @ 10:28 am

Yeah, Lee has been great. The first one to really come out and tackle the issue and offer help.

Stephen Landau said,

November 6, 2008 @ 12:36 am

We were literally just talking about this on Monday. Glad to see there’s an easy solution, because I didn’t feel like uninstalling FP10 and reinstalling FP9. Now I don’t have to. Guess that was good timing on my part to wait to install FP10 until the last couple weeks, so I only recently noticed this problem. Of course Shaun was heckling me for being a late adopter for FP10…

Thanks for the tip!
s.

Nestor said,

November 28, 2008 @ 11:38 am

Glad I never got used to the flash uploader, it’s always had some bug or other. KISS!

butwhatabout said,

January 27, 2009 @ 1:00 pm

but what about downloading files? AS far as I can see, the SWFUpload solutions solves the issue for uploads. What about downloads – specifically using the FileReference.download() call?

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