As usual, awesome support from Articulate! I just ran into this issue, and sure enough, a quick solution is already posted!

Cool, thanks for the update. Does this also fix presentations within zip files? It appears to not do this.

I had the same experience as Tyler. The automatic updater does not appear to be able to apply the fix to files located in zipped folders. I was, however, able to republish my files to a new zip file and upload them to the LMS. Now the courses are running properly on machines with Flash Player v10.

[…] blog post does a good job identifying where the problem lies with the compatability of Flash 10 Player and […]

The updater does currently not support the scanning of zip files.

And thanks for the kind words, Troy!

Can we get Articulate Presenter 4 Updater for Adobe Flash Player 10 ?
How could we update “stealthray.swf” for AP4 ?

Flipping sweet! This fix worked! I’ve had customers’ emailing for two days and I hadn’t the slightest how to fix the problem.

Great job to articulate.

For updating files on secure servers, is it not true that the stealthray.swf is identical for all presentations, so once you get a new version of that file, you can copy and paste that file into all locations?

OK, help me out here.

Since the patch is relevent to Articulate Presenter 5, I assume it is not relevant to people viewing my produced content on my company’s LMS, because they don’t have Articulate products on their computers, only browsers, with the infamous Flash Player 10.

So does this mean that I will have to republish all of my courses and reload them into our LMS?

Another question: Will version 9 have issues? Will it come with the patch installed?

Thanks.

This is great, but what about the thousands of CD-ROMs I have in production shipped all around the world that are now broken?

Shouldn’t you be working with Adobe so that Adobe releases a patch? This is seriously a business-crippling problem.

yes, what about this? This would be very helfpful if so. Please advise.
Lon

>>For updating files on secure servers, is it not true that the stealthray.swf is identical for all presentations, so once you get a new version of that file, you can copy and paste that file into all locations?

Betsy DeGeorge

What about a Mac Flash 10 update? I’m stuck.

I am using the 30 day trial to see if I can get a test job out the door and based upon this will purchase the package 🙂
The problem I am experiencing is that the engage files sitting inside Powerpoint’s Presenter display are all working fine, however the quiz slide displays the dreaded white screen alluded too in the Flash 10 warning.
I have run the Flash 10 updater and scanned all C drive files as well as the folder where I am exporting the exported files. I have run this twice now to no avail!
Help, I need to get this proj. working in three days …arggh!

Jeremy
I have run the

So does this mean that I will have to republish all of my courses and reload them into our LMS?

We have arround 1000 of courses publish in Articulate. It will be hell of task to republish and upload files again on LMS.
Do you have any solution where we dont have to republish files?

Since the scanner doesn’t scan zipped files, this means I have to republish ALL of my courses and re-upload them? Because, as it stands now, I cannot view ANY of my already published courses.

Hi,
We’re used an older version of Presenter (v 4.019d Pro). And the Flash Player 10 fix-scan did not work. It apparently didn’t recognize the “stealthray.swf” file(s) from the older version. Is there another way I can fix these older presentation or is there a different patch/tool for older Presenter publisjed presentations. I need to fix a large amount of content ASAP!

Much thanks,

Pete Taveira
Director of Webinar Programs
ptaveira@avitage.com
Tele: 781.522.8000
Direct: 781-522-8081
Visit our Production Resource Center for tutorials, best practices and FAQs:
http://www.avitage.com/resources/
Avitage- execute the complex sale
through innovative communications.
_____________________________________

Regrettably, we are five days behind where we could have been in this remediation if AP had done an e-mail blast to registered users. We didn’t know there was an issue until customers started upgrading their Flash versions. Oops.

I am relieved that I have no .zip files in production, and very glad to see that y’all were very prompt with the fix.

Al

I agree. The updater appears to work very well. Good job on that!

However, why couldn’t you have sent out an announcement in advance to registered users? I agree it feels like we were a bit blindsided by this unexpected event that impacts our users and makes us look bad.
thanks,
Lon

A quick response to Swapnel. No you shouldn’t have to republish your courses to your LMS. If you download the Flash 10 Updater, and connect to your LMS via FTP, the updater will trawl through your server automatically by itself and update the necessary files. It may take some hours to work through the 1000 courses but it will work by itself so you can get on with other things. Once it has found the files, you need to prompt the application to make the changes and when finished, your courses will be visible in your LMS.

1)If I work with Flash Player 10 now, will my customers with version 9 or older be able to view?
2)What about customers with CDs of articulate programs?

[…] Flash Player 10 was released this week.  This can impact some of your older courses.  If you’re an Articulate user, check out Gabe’s post on the Word of Mouth blog. […]

Help! It’s exam season in Australian Universities and our content (especially revision materials) has all been made using Articulate v4.109d Std. It seems that the fix won’t work for us… The students are up in arms! Anything we can do?

Amazing service as always. I *heart* Articulate!

We have potentially hundreds or thousands of articulate presenter lectures available through Blackboard/WebCT (LMS) courses. We can only access those materials via WebDAV – FTP is not an option. Do you have a method of connecting the updater to a WebDAV connection. If not, do you have any other ideas on how we would update the LMS presentations to work with Flash 10?

Will this updater also update packaged presentations (.zip) that have been loaded into the LMS and set to unpackage for viewing?

I’m very grateful that the Rapid elearning blogger put this in his post – otherwise I WOULDNT HAVE KNOWN. My e-learning impacts 14,000 locations. About 10,000 of those locations get CDs. This is a serious issue!

I agree with Greg who said “Shouldn’t you be working with Adobe so that Adobe releases a patch? This is seriously a business-crippling problem.”

And I also agree with the poster who said, “Why couldn’t you have sent out an announcement in advance to registered users?”

Please let us know what processes you will put in place to avoid this problem in the future. I am a registered user for a reason – please keep me informed!

I use SFTP – SSH File Transfer Protocol (secure FTP) not just FTP and I can not access my website through your flash 10 updater to update the swf files.

How can I do it ? I expect others would be in the same situation.

regards
Stewart

I agree – this should be fixed with Adobe as we just sold 100.000 cd-roms fully expecting Articulate to be backwards compatible for at least a couple of versions of Flash. This is a business disaster for us.
Please e-mail us if there is any solutions.

I have re-installed Flash Player 10 and run the Articulate Updater numerous times and I’m still seeing the same error above when I try to launch the presentation. I’m using both IE 7 and Firefox 3.

Hi Everyone- Thanks for all your comments and questions. Please take a look at this forum post that I just wrote, which answers many of your questions.

Please reply here or in the forums if you have additional questions or if yours wasn’t answered.

You can also submit a case (or reply to your existing email from Articulate Support) to get one-on-one help from us.

Hi Jenine- re: WebDAV, here’s what I’d suggest you try, in order:

1) Although you use WebDAV, someone should be able to get FTP access to your server. That’s probably the best approach.
2) Otherwise, WebDAV down the content, scan it locally with our updater tool, then WebDAV it back up.

I agree, you should have a relationship with Adobe to address this earlier in the process and keep us informed. . I’ve been using Articulate for 1 year and this is the second time I’ve had to revisit classes because of a Flash Update. Even though you have provided a fix,it is is unplanned for me and is costing me time on new projects to go back and fix this.

I distribute my classes via zip files until our website is up next year. This is costing us money and time.

Is it safe to assume that you (Articulate) have run the patch on all of the courses that reside on Articulate Online?

Hi Charles- Updating the courses in Articulate Online is more complex than just running our own updater, but our QA team is currently verifying the update for AO accounts, and we hope to roll that out tomorrow (Friday).

Our clients install their courses as part of their help systems and run them off of their servers. Is there anyway that we could get permission to allow them to install and run the updater themselves? I noticed that the updater intalls in an Articulate directory which shouldn’t matter if they don’t have Articulate, right? It would just create an Articulate directory? Would it be possible to get permission to let them run the updater? If not, we will have to rezip all the courses and ask them to reinstall each one. We are talking about quite a few customers.

Hi Classbuilder- Sure thing! Anyone is welcome to download and run the Articulate Flash Updater; you needn’t have Articulate Presenter to use the updater.

Thanks Gabe. The updater worked like a charm. All of the presentations on our server are completely good to go now. Thanks Articulate!

On Saturday we added support for Flash Player 10 & Presenter 5 content to Articulate Online. You can review the full release notes for AO 1.10.

Thanks, Gabe! The updater worked great for us. We updated the courses on our LMS content server and they work well for those users who are not yet on Flash 10 and those who have already upgraded.

Regards,
Scott

[…] Online accounts has been updated to support Flash Player 10. You can learn more about this issue in my previous blog post. Presenter ‘09 content continues to work as expected with Flash Player […]

Are their plans to release a patch or will the updater fix the stealthray.swf file I have in my main Presenter (Program Files) area?

Will I have to run the Updater each time I generate a new presentation for now on?

Thanks.

-Steven

Hi Steven- That functionality already exists. From the FAQs:

Will the updater also update Presenter 5 so that new presentations I publish will work with Flash Player 10?

Yes, the updater will also update your installed Articulate Presenter 5 files so that any new presentations you publish will work correctly with Adobe Flash Player 10.

THANK YOU!!! I am scanning my system as we speak. We discovered the problem late last week, and figured out that a rollback using System Restore was a temporary workaround. How wonderful to have a REAL solution already from your site! My hat’s off to you folks.

kindest regards,
Barbara C

Thanks for the fix!

Will this fix be backward compatible with older versions of Flash Player (i.e., Flash Player (FP) 9)? The reason being is that not all learners (global) may have updated their player to FP 10.

Hi Jim- That’s correct: The minimum Flash requirement for viewing Presenter 5 content has not changed; it is still Flash 6,0,79 or higher.

Thanks You Gabe… I had run the updater on one machine but not the other… now I see how it has been changed.

Appreciate it.

-sjf

I want to chime in that I was pleased with the ease with which we were able to run the Updater to fix our courses. This is completely overshadowed, however, by my disappointment in both the issue in the first place, and Articulate’s delayed and understated response, having had insight to the issue and its seriousness (via the Forums) as early as this spring during Flash’s beta period.

This proved to be rather embarrassing and a significant time commitment on our part to resolve. We love Articulate, but our clients have questioned our judgment in our software selection. I’m not sure what to tell them anymore.

hey, guess what, articulate staff? I have to dig through 1229 zip files, right now, in order to separate articulate lessons from non-articulate-related zips. then I have to unzip them individually. if your fix had zip support, I wouldn’t have to do this. seriously. why don’t you address the zip complaint instead of ignoring it?

Fantastic Fix!
I’m sorry to hear about all the problems others have had. My “nerve ends” and whats left of “my hair” goes out to you all. We had some reservations about the fix for all of our trainings, but all went well and quickly. THUMBS-UP, to Articulate! Great Job!

This is an absolute disaster for us. We have presentations sent out on CD as well as hundreds uploaded as package files to our LMS… Your fix does not work for us. Please sort out a better solution ASAP. As it stands we will not be renewing or recommending Articulate to anyone ever again.

It works fine for presenter 5. Easy to use and problem solved. But what about older files? Are you working on a solution for presenter 4 files?

Good news: The updater now supports Presenter 4 in addition to Presenter 5. Visit this link to download the latest version.

Any ideas on zip files? This is a massive headache for us. We have 14 courses in Moodle, 4 zip files in each each 10 to 11MB. Days of work and a right pain…

I have downloaded the Flash updater, but it will not connect to the FTP site, the connection fails. I have tried two other FTP programs on two separate computers to access the FTP site, and everything connected well. This patch will not connect on either computer. It would be helpful if there was a more helpful error message, then perhaps it would be easier to get this patch to work

Hi Brendan- The best approach is to use the FTP option in the updater and update your courses directly on your server, then you don’t have to worry about zipping or unzipping anything.

Hi Mark- Could you please go to the below folder path and post your log file in a new post in our forums for us to review?

C:UsersUSERNAMEAppDataRoamingArticulateFlash10Updater

Great updater. Was able to update a few hundred files quickly.
really enjoyed being able to update files on multiple servers without republising source files.

Gabe,
I tried again from a direct internet connection (bypassing the corporate firewalls). I think it would be handy to have a link to the log file on the tool itself. It would appear it could be a proxy issue, but as there is nowhere to configure proxy access, then there is no way to resolve the problem.
Running on a direct iternet connection the application seems to be working. Hopefully all is well now. Thanks for your help.
Mark

Does this problem with the Flash Player 10 also occur on cd-roms that have the server2go software installed?
See: http://www.articulate.com/blog/how-to-bypass-flash-security-attachment-download-issues-in-cd-playback/
Elka

I’ve run the Flash update and things are working good with Flash 10, however, my embedded web objects don’t appear to be working. Has anyone else encountered similar issues?

I have embedded a link to an external survey website. This was set to open automatically when the slide was advanced, but now it doesn’t work with Flash 10.

Hi Ryan- Do you have a link you can share so that we can take a look at your content? And what browser were you using?

Sure, here it is:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=K9jeCANSxrSQbDC3QIzkNg_3d_3d

It use to work seemlessly before Flash Player 10. I embedded this on my evaluation instructions slide. When a user would advance off this slide, this link would open in a new browser window. I liked the idea of the evaluation being separate from the articulate window. That way, users could go back and review any material before commenting without having to navigate a single browser session.

We’re using MS Internet Explorer

Thanks, Ryan. That link by itself doesn’t really help see what the issue is, though. Do you have a link to your Presenter course, so that I can take a look at the problem you’re describing?

Gabe, I downloaded the new updater to catch the AP 4 content we have – and it wants to update a lot of player.html files that were flagged OK in the earlier release of the updater.

I’d rather not update the player.html if I can avoid it – they have all been manually edited to include the text in the presentation so that search engines can find it.

What changes are needed in the Player.html files? Can I update the stealthray.swf without updating the player.html files?

I’m going to leave my machine running and wait for an answer, rather than scan 9,866 folders over again…

Hi Al- The player.html files are updated for Web Object support in IE8. Though it’s not possible to tell the updater not to update player.html, a player_backup.html file is created, so perhaps you could write a script or find some utility to switch player_backup.html back to player.html after running our updater… assuming you don’t use Web Objects and aren’t concerned about WO support in IE8.

Also see this forum post.

“A Flash file used to play your presentations (stealthray.swf) cannot accurately detect the version number of the newly released Flash 10 Player.”

If this was indeed the problem, I hope you guys aren’t going to rely on version sniffing in the future… something which is, of course, unnecessary.

Running the updater is not an option for me I don’t think. My client uses SkillSoft to host the programs we develop in Articulate. SkillSoft is not enthusiastic about hosting Articulate programs to begin with and I’m not sure they would be willing to run the Updater. Has anyone else been working with SkillSoft?

Meanwhile, would it make any sense to republish these Articulate 5 programs in Articulate 09?

Also, I would like to reiterate what others have mentioned: Articulate should have been proactive and informed us early so that we wouldn’t be blindsided by our customers.

Thanks

MT

Hi Mary- I’m sorry for the trouble with the updater.

Yes, republishing in Presenter ’09 would certainly resolve the issue for you.

And again, we’re very sorry for not providing information sooner. As I mentioned in this forum post:

Why didn’t we release the Flash 10 updater sooner?
Although we were aware of the issue in the beta, betas are subject to change and we didn’t know what Adobe was going to do at release time. We didn’t know the issue would still exist with the final release, but we were busy working on the updater anyway to have it ready when Flash 10 was released. We also needed to verify the updater against the final release of Flash Player 10.

Why didn’t you give us details sooner?
Although we did post in these forums that we were aware of the issue during the Flash Player 10 beta, we could have given more details about what was happening sooner, and for that, we apologize.

Hi,

2 days ago my Adobe installer window informed me that an update was ready and withour reviewing further I did. Lo and behold – it installed Flash 11. End result – chaos with Articulate 5.2. Long story short I’m back to flash 10 but since several other people in my user group had the same issue, I submitted a ticket to Articulate. Their tech support staff informed me Flash 11 isn’t even here – was I dreaming??? Did anyone else have the same problem? I’m getting ready to upgrade to Articulate ’09 – will it work with Flash 11 and future updates??? Please advise.

– Piyusha

Flash 11 isn’t out. You probably shouldn’t be using computers.

Does this fix support Windows 2000 PCs???

Hi CC- Yes, the fix is more about the version of Presenter and Flash Player you’re using, and less about the version of Windows you’re using.

Hi Gabe,

Ok but why am I getting this error when I run the updater on 2 diff Windows 2000 PCs then when I run it?

ERROR is “Flash10Updater.exe has generated errors and will be closed by windows”.

Thank you for your assistance.
CC

Hi CC,

It sounds like you do not have .NET Framework 2.0 installed on your machine. Could you please install it from the link below and see if it resolves the issue?

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=0856eacb-4362-4b0d-8edd-aab15c5e04f5&displaylang=en

If you continue to have problems, please submit a support case to us via the link below:

http://www.articulate.com/support/contact/

I have loaded the latest version of flash and installed the flash 10 updater. It does not seem to launch

Hi Grant,

Will you please submit a support case to us that we can take a closer look at the issues?

http://www.articulate.com/support/contact/

Hello,

I recently had a Windows issue (unheard of, I know…) and had to re-install Windows Vista, Articulate Studio, etc (basically, all of my applications). So, I started working on an update to an existing eLearning course I created last year using Studio ’09, and when I ‘recompiled’ it, I started getting the old Adobe Flash error for ‘stealthray.exe’ as noted in this thread. Funny thing is that I am using the latest Flash (version 11.x), with the latest Articulate software and PPT 2007 on my Vista Windows PC. I thought this issue was only for Flash 10? I tried running the patch from Articulate, but it will not execute (have to research this more and see what is missing with the .NET).

Is anyone else having an issue with this using Flash v11.x? And, are there any suggested workarounds?

I see that Adobe has now released flash player 11. What is the support for flash 11 with this version of Presenter?

Jay Tyo

Probably the more important question on the long term, since the movement to eliminate Flash seems to be gaining ground, is what are the plans for Articulate as they apply to html5?

Hi Jay,

Presenter 4 and 5 content will work as expected in Flash Player 11 as long as they’ve been updated using the Updated specified in this blog article.

@Richard: Flash is not being eliminated from the desktop; its support is only being discontinued on mobile devices. So our product strategy has not changed.

We are working on a brand-new product, Articulate Storyline, which will offer support for publishing for iOS / HTML5. You can learn more here and sign up to be notified when it’s available.

The next major version of Studio will also offer native mobile device support. If you’re looking for an interim HTML5 solution for Presenter ’09, you can learn more about a third-party custom player skin here.

Thanks Gabe. I am just beginning to here a lot of chatter on the net about movements to encourage software and browser developers to move away from Flash plugins entirely. Obviously that isn’t going to happen overnight but I think it is probably something that we can expect in the future.