Flash Exploits on the Loose: Update Now [telecom]

Where does a nervous novice find Adobe Flash Player (or a relevant Adobe Updater) on his Mac, so he can start them up and check for updates and version numbers?

I don't know if it will work on a mac (I suspect it will, but...) you can browse to:

and for windows, that page will identify the current level and direct you to an update source.

My favorite place to check my Flash Player version is at Adobe's site:

This will tell you what version you are currently running, if you have it installed at all, and the most recent versions for each of the operating systems. If you see you need to upgrade, there is a link to the download center.

Flash Player likes to check for its own updates, so don't be surprised if you're already running the current version.

John C. Fowler, snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com

i have been using

for a couple of years on several macs all through the one account. I have not seen the need to upgrade to a paid version. It notifies you when New application versions appear; you still have the choice to ignore updates.

If you have not found it here is a link, I has Macs and Flash Player works just fine.

Thanks much for this (also to earlier poster of this link).

For those of us using ClickToFlash with Safari (and liking it very much), to do what you suggest above we need to go to that web page and then click on the second Flash block on the web page, located to the right of the text beginning with "Adobe Flash Player is the standard for delivering...".

Interestingly, this gives for me "You have version 10,2,153,1 installed"

-- and yes, those are commas in the version number. Maybe just a trivial formatting error? Also, EasyFind says that what's on my MacBook is just "Flash Player.plugin" (about 23 MB), and the Get Info for that plugin says its version is "10.2 r153" -- close, but not exact.

Is that the "Adobe Flash Player" we're talking about here? (Are plugins technically apps?)

It's always had commas in that field, as long as I can remember. It may just be the way Flash Player reports itself. (Adobe didn't invent Flash. They acquired the company that did.) Anyway, the commas and periods are interchangeable.

That's the same Flash Player. Of course, if you've got a Flash blocker so you only see the Flash animations you want to, you're pretty well protected anyway.

"App" is a fuzzy term which could mean anything running on your computer at all if you stretched it enough.

John C. Fowler, snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com

Agreed -- but also, when you see "app" (or "plugin", or "fldr") appearing in the "Kind" column in a Finder window, those terms are referring to a very sharply defined identifier or characteristic of each individual "Finder object", is that not so?

And by the way, what about the term "Finder object"?

I just spent a couple of hours reading the user's manual for a popular sync program which repeatedly used that term for the objects it would operate on in a Finder window -- but never, ever defined it.

Is "Finder object" a defined term in "Mac-talk"? (that is, in technical discussions of Apple's OS X?)

Is anything of any sort whose icon you can drag into a Findow window a "Finder object"? Or only a more limited set of objects, like certain types of files?

:> :> "App" is a fuzzy term which could mean anything running on your :> computer at all if you stretched it enough. :>

:Agreed -- but also, when you see "app" (or "plugin", or "fldr") :appearing in the "Kind" column in a Finder window, those terms are :referring to a very sharply defined identifier or characteristic of each :individual "Finder object", is that not so?

:And by the way, what about the term "Finder object"?

:I just spent a couple of hours reading the user's manual for a popular :sync program which repeatedly used that term for the objects it would :operate on in a Finder window -- but never, ever defined it.

:Is "Finder object" a defined term in "Mac-talk"? (that is, in technical :discussions of Apple's OS X?)

:Is anything of any sort whose icon you can drag into a Findow window a :"Finder object"? Or only a more limited set of objects, like certain :types of files?

A finder object is something you can manipulate in the finder. So files and folders, of course, but also windows, disk drives, etc. It's not a very common usage, outside of the AppleScripting community, I don't think, and probably doesn't belong in most end-user docs.

On Firefox and similar browsers, that had required installation of the GetPlus+ extension to regularly check for plugin updates. I don't like plugins that install additional unwanted software, so I just check manually every so often. Previous Flash downloads from Adobe's Web site forced you to download the extension and then had the extension download the plugin. I kept removing the extension.

If you see the proprietary "download manager" popup, that's from GetPlus+. The plugin won't complete the installation unless you click the "acknowledge and agree" when the license window pops up. Then you have to click the "close the download manager".

I don't know how Adobe could have required additional unnecessary steps but it's annoying and it's easy to miss the acknowledgement step when the license agreement window pops up.

Internet Explorer doesn't use plugins but ActiveX controls and I never experienced automatic updates for Flash. There may be a GetPlus+ control to implement the automatic update checks, but someone more familiar will have to answer.