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Introducing the Flash Player bug and issue management system

The Flash Player bug and issue management system is a new public bug system that allows external users and developers to report and track enhancement requests, bugs, and issues for Adobe Flash Player. It provides a familiar and consistent experience to developers already using the existing public bug and issue management systems that are available for the open-source Adobe Flex and BlazeDS projects. This new system further increases the transparency into the evolution and development of Flash Player and provides greater opportunities for participation within the Flash community.

Prior to the availability of the Flash Player bug and issue management system, Adobe provided one-way entry points to submit bugs and enhancement requests for Flash Player via e-mail or an online form. While this has been a good source of issues and feature requests, it provided users minimal visibility over previously reported bugs and their status. The new public bug system allows developers and end users to search for other publicly reported bugs and enhancement requests, and to track their status, which will be updated upon major development milestones. In addition, users can vote on submitted bugs and enhancement requests, allowing much improved visibility and community involvement.

Guidelines for contributing a bug report or feature request

The goal of this new public bug system is to let the community help Adobe identify issues with Flash Player. For this to be achieved effectively, there are some guidelines that should be followed when using this system to log a bug or feature request.

Search first

Millions of users develop for, and view content using, Adobe Flash Player. It is easily possible that someone else has already come across your bug or thought about the same feature request that you are about to submit. By searching the bug and issue management system for your issue first, you can prevent duplicate submissions (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Using the search to find existing issues

Additionally, if you find that your issue already exists within the system, you can vote on the existing bug to raise its visibility, or contribute more information that would help Flash Player engineers more easily diagnose and correct the issue (see Figure 2).

Figure 2. Voting for an issue to improve its visibility

Be descriptive and concise

A clear description written in a concise manner can go a long way toward helping identify a legitimate problem quickly. By providing a clear description that is unambiguous to Adobe and fellow developers, you can encourage others to vote for your issue or feature.

Provide simple, reproducible examples

Descriptions alone are often not enough. Having a practical example handy to demonstrate the issue helps expedite the process further. If you're an end user, please include a link to the website that is causing problems. If you're a developer, provide an example that clearly illustrates the issue.

The simpler the example is the better. For instance, if you're a developer who has identified a bug while working with a large project, don't disclose your entire project's files along with your bug report (disclosing proprietary code alone is a bad idea). Instead, create a new sample that specifically isolates the issue in the simplest way possible.

Reproducibility is also important. Having an example clearly reproduce an issue can make that issue much easier to test. When creating your own example, consider the results of that example if the issue was fixed. Ideally, when possible, examples should be able to determine if the issue they identify becomes fixed and relay that to a tester (see Figure 3).

Figure 3. Good example that is simple, clear, and identifies when the issue has been fixed

Sample files are always better than inline code, even in very simple cases requiring a small amount of code. Files can be tested quicker without requiring engineers to compile new examples on their own. If your example requires certain server dependencies, try to host an example of it online as well as providing source files with your bug or issue submission.

Identify occurrence

Where does your issue occur? Does it happen on Apple Mac OS as well as Microsoft Windows systems? What about Linux? Did this work before on an older version of Flash Player (i.e., is it an injection)? If so, which version? Knowing the answers to these questions helps reduce the effort needed to narrow the root cause of an issue further.

Have patience

Although Flash Player now uses the same public bug system currently in use by Flex, you may find that issues logged against Flash Player may not be resolved as quickly as some Flex issues. Since Flash Player bug resolutions are linked to Flash Player releases, you may not see an issue identified as being resolved until a new version of Flash Player is released. However, until then, you can keep track of an issue's progress through its status. Table 1 summarizes the available status indicators.

Table 1. Flash Player bug and issue management system status indicators

Icon	Status	Description
	Community	Issue provided by the external community, vote if interested (this is the first status given to a new issue)
	New	New bug, waiting to be triaged (this is the step following Community when an issue has reached an actionable number of votes)
	Waiting on info	This issue needs more information before progressing further
	Under investigation	Assigned to a developer to investigate further
	Internal review	Triaged bug, waiting to be assigned and prioritized
	Committed	This request has been committed
	Deferred	This request has been deferred, or pushed back, for investigation at a later date
	Open	The issue is open and ready for the assignee to start work on it
	In progress	This issue is being actively worked on at the moment by the assignee
	Resolved	A resolution has been taken, and is awaiting verification by the reporter (from here, issues are either reopened or are closed)
	Reopened	This issue was once resolved, but the resolution was deemed incorrect (from here, issues are either marked assigned or resolved)
	Closed	The issue is considered finished and the resolution is correct (issues which are closed can be reopened)

The most common statuses are Community, New, Under Investigation, and Resolved. It may not be uncommon for a status to jump from Under Investigation to Resolved with the release of a Flash Player version.

While the goal of this public bug system is to make future Flash Player releases better, keep in mind that it is not an avenue for—or a replacement of—Adobe technical support. If you require direct assistance with Flash Player or any other Adobe product, please contact technical support through the normal channels.

Where to go from here

The public Flash Player bug and issue management system gives Adobe an improved and more direct mechanism for interacting with the Flash Player user community. The ability to generate statistical information on what issues are recurring helps us better prioritize those bugs and enhancements that are important to the community. The searchability and status available to end users should result in overall improved quality of reported issues with fewer duplications. With good bug logging practices, more issues can be handled by the Flash Player team.

The public Flash Player bug system is available at https://bugs.adobe.com/flashplayer/. Anyone can browse existing bugs and feature requests. Only registered users (registration is free) can submit new issues.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License

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