End Collaborator's use of Adobe Flash

[rmcfatter]

Collaborator (and all Web-based tools, really) should retire any use of Adobe Flash.  The same functionality is now available natively in standards-compliant HTML5 browsers, which are commonplace at this time.

Flash Player is a never-ending source of security issues, causes grief for IT administrators, and is constantly pining for updates.  If it weren't for Collaborator, I could remove the flash plugin from my system entirely and enjoy improved security.

[rmcfatter]

Just after posting this I checked the news and found that as of Monday night (July 13, 2015), Mozilla disabled Flash by default in its Firefox browser-- not just "old" versions of Flash as before, but all versions-- due to egregious bugs in Flash that were being actively exploited. This means I can't in good conscience use the flash plugin (in any browser) and hope that Collaborator at least limps along without it.

[MJackson]

We're looking at either making its presence a configurable option or dropping it entirely soon. It's there primarily to support (older versions of) IE. I'm leaning towards dropping it on the theory that it causes more problems than it solves (the things it solves are at best inconveniences compared to the security vulnerabilities it opens users up to). As a stopgap, you can limit flash to only execute on your Collaborator host via things like adblockers that support whitelisting.

[santia2c]

@MJackson, Is there a way to track any Product Enhancement Request other than visiting this page continuosly? This Flash issue is of extreme interest for me and my company and I don't want to miss anything related to the conlusion of this issue.

[MJackson]

The definitive source for the release status of any particular issue is the changelog in manual.  For what it's worth, this change is tentatively slated for release in Q4 of this year.

[santia2c]

I was looking for a more formal process. Is too bad, but thank you for sharing the implementation date. I see that this idea is still labeled as "New Idea". If the request has been considered and is slated for release, shouldn't the status be changed to "Selected for development"?

The reason I am asking all this is because my management wants to know how to better keep track of things that are important to us and waiting for a new release changelog to see if something we needed/wanted was implemented does not seem appropriate.

Which brings me to this question... Can we track product enhancement request via the Case Management Portal when those are submitted through the online request form?

[JCollier]

This change is listed in our version history.  It was added in teh 9.4.9400 release on Devember 8, 2015.

Detailed version history: https://support.smartbear.com/viewarticle/66391/