The Adobe Flash Player started supporting Windows Vista as of 9,0,28. This is the current version, but you may know it as the version that introduced full screen support. Earlier player versions are not built to support Vista, though for the most part they should run pretty well.

When doing a clean install, you will just need to go to the Flash Player Download Center and download the current player. However if you or one of your users is upgrading from XP and still has an earlier build of the player installed, you will have a few strange behaviors.

Note: users upgrading to Vista from XP will retain their shared objects and can be used normally.

If you run into a Vista user that is on an older player, there are a few things to keep in mind:

1. Express Install - The Express Install will not run. The user will see the permission dialog box but answering “yes” will not initiate the install. This is due to a different security model being in place in Vista that changes local file access.

If this is a big concern for you right now, you can do your own detection of the OS and player version and not run express install, but soon Adobe will be releasing a modification to Express Install that will direct these users to the Player Download Center. You will not need to do anything to take advantage of this update when it becomes available.

2. Shared Objects - Shared Objects are affected by the same Vista security model change and while any existing shared objects will still be present, you may not be able to access them without the latest Flash Player.

3. Local Connection - Local Connections will be affected in the same way and will not run on un-supported versions of the player on Vista.

4. File Reference - Save and Open are also affected in the same way, so file uploading will be non-functional in older players on Vista.

If you use any of these features, you should detect Vista users on old players and encourage them to upgrade, no matter what version of Flash you are exporting for. Here is some sample AS2 code to do the check:

if(System.capabilities.os=="Windows Vista" && !hasMinVersion(9,0,28)){
     //do something to tell the user they need to upgrade
     //to the latest Flash Player to view the site.
}
function hasMinVersion(major:Number, minor:Number, build:Number):Boolean{
     //take a version like WIN 9,0,28,0 and strip the platform
     //and divide the version number into an array
     var v:Array = System.capabilities.version.split(" ")[1].split(",");
     if(v[0]<major ) return false;
     if(v[1]<minor) return false;
     if(v[2]<build) return false;
     return true;
}

freakin’ awesome is all I can say. I am continually amazed at what is being done with ActionScript 3.0. As Flash gets more and more low level operations, the creativity shown by the Flash community grows exponentially.

This particular amazing example is bump mapping with reflectivity all done through bitmaps in AS3. Seriously, you have to check it out. This is based on PaperVision3D, an open source project being worked on by a lot of very smart Flash developers.

I want to thank mrDoob for pointing me to the site and for his own extremely creative work with PaperVision.

As of last week I changed roles at Adobe. Since August I have been working as part of the Flash authoring team as designer/developer relations manager. I am in the process of transitioning over to the Flash Player team as a product manager. While I loved working with the Flash authoring team, the opportunity to work as product manager was very tempting, and the fact that it was on Flash Player, the technology that makes the Flash ecosystem possible, was too amazing to resist.

For those of you that know Emmy, don’t worry, she is still there. In fact I report to Emmy now and player has two product managers. There is a lot going on in Player these days, and Emmy has been doing the job of two (or more) for a long time. I’m still getting up to speed on everything the Flash player does, and it is a lot more than I really had originally thought, between the dot releases of Flash, Tamarin, and Linux player, it is a busy, very efficient team.

My blog has been sparse the last few months, but I hope to get back to blogging regularly again.

Also, I will be at Flash In the Can - Toronto, DX3, WebDU and a couple of other conferences along the way. If you will be at one, I hope to see you there.