8 ms·

Much praise to the Google Chrome team for handling this sort of thing gracefully.

by m104 17y ago

cmelbye 17y ago
Yeah, it also looks like Safari's recent improvements in terms of plugins that they introduced in Snow Leopard have successfully prevented this problem from taking down the whole browser.
- wehriam 17y ago
  How recent? 4.0.4 crashed for me.
  - wehriam 17y ago
    The Firefox nightly (3.7a1pre) also crashed.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
  - FluidDjango 17y ago
    NOTE: I generally browse with ClickToFlash active in Safari. That of course prevented the crash (until I clicked). With Safari 4.0.4 (ClickToFlash turned off) the browser was fine but the Flash plug-in died, and Safari informed me: > Flash Player (Safari Intenet plug-in) quit unexpectedly. > This report will be sent to Apple automatically. PS: 10.6.2, FWIW
  - cmelbye 17y ago
    You need to have at least Snow Leopard, I believe. Apple recently moved plugins to separate processes, which prevents the entire browser from crashing. Flash will crash, but it won't take down the whole browser.
    - ubernostrum 17y ago
      Except IIRC this wasn't about security or stability; it was because they went 64-bit on everything and needed a way to have the 64-bit apps and 32-bit plugins interact sanely.
ramchip 17y ago
And much praise to the Opera team for just not crashing in the first place. I can zoom in the blue square, move around, etc. and the page is still fine after a minute or so leaving it open.
- vimalg2 17y ago
  This is excellent. But I wish I could see an error/warning message a la Chrome. However, i did notice a perceptible bump in memory usage via the System Monitor panel applet. The POC probably exploits a known Memory-allocation bug. [Currently running Opera 10.10/i686 Linux] Edited: Grammar
- tlrobinson 17y ago
  Chrome doesn't crash either, just the plugin in a separate process. Same with the latest versions of Safari, except it takes down all instances of Flash, even those in other pages, which is obviously inferior.
- Niten 17y ago
  Can anyone enlighten me on this? I noticed the same thing: * Viewing this page in Firefox 3.6 on Windows caused Flash to crash, taking the browser down with it. * Viewing it in Chrome on the same machine caused the Flash plugin subprocess to crash, resulting in an error message in Chrome. * However, no crash occurred in Opera. This despite the fact that 32-bit Opera on Windows does not appear to use isolated subprocesses for running NSAPI plugins. So what's going on here? Does Opera use some sort of in-process isolation to protect the browser from its plugins? Or is there perhaps some quirk of running in the Opera environment that caused this Flash crash not to be triggered like it was in Firefox and Chrome?
  - vimalg2 17y ago
    Adobe Flash on Opera/Linux has always been quirky , crashy and all-round unreliable for me in the past. So, I use Opera as my pure-HTML+javascript browser, with ALL plugins, sound, animation, and Java plugins turned off in Global preferences. Going off-topic [Opera praise]: These settings instantly turn Opera into the most stable and shockingly scalable 'Research and reference' browser I've used. I only use Firefox3.5.x solely for web-dev, Google Apps, heavy-JS Web 2.0 apps, and Flash-enabled sites of course (with Flashblock as first-line-defence).
Brushfire 17y ago
It handles it less gracefully than I would have assumed. If you are running flash in multiple Chrome windows, this will corrupt ALL of them, instead of just the one visiting the page linked above. Wasnt one of Chrome's huge selling features the idea of memory independence?
- windsurfer 17y ago
  Flash is to blame for that one.
- Groxx 17y ago
  Memory independence + plugin that isn't designed to run multiple processes = plugin that can only run in one process. Imagine if Flash, forced into running twice, tried to read and write from the same cookie / any other kind of data, without any concurrency tools of any kind. Chrome has to run Flash how Flash wants to be run, because doing otherwise could cause massive problems with any plugin. This is part of why it took so long for them to make Chrome, resolving the memory independence desires with the needs of plugins requires giving some things up. It was either roughly all plugins in existence, or allow the same process to interact with multiple tabs / windows.
  - wheels 17y ago
    This sounds a bit fishy to me. Of course Flash can be run from multiple processes simultaneously since it naturally runs inside of multiple browsers simultaneously, and I assume Chrome has some internal (socket based?) IPC that they're using anyway...
    - Groxx 17y ago
      Part of the difficulty is that this problem applies to all plugins. Flash may be able to handle it just fine, in which case it could just be a poor plugin, but what about any other plugin out there? Heck, Firefox uses a lock-file in your profile to prevent multiple instances from running. What's to stop a plugin from requiring such a file, writing / reading it frequently, and having no error handling because it's only designed to run singly? Ultimately, you either harden the separations to run multiple instances of it, breaking many in the process and possibly damaging data irrecoverably, or you just let the plugin decide and have backwards compatibility, which is hugely important for a browser.
chaosprophet 17y ago
Firefox 3.7a also handles this quite well, with a 'A plugin crashed' message.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]

Much praise to the Google Chrome team for handling this sort of thing gracefully.

by m104 17y ago

Much praise to the Google Chrome team for handling this sort of thing gracefully.

Yeah, it also looks like Safari's recent improvements in terms of plugins that they introduced in Snow Leopard have successfully prevented this problem from taking down the whole browser.

wehriam 17y ago
How recent? 4.0.4 crashed for me.
- wehriam 17y ago
  The Firefox nightly (3.7a1pre) also crashed.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- FluidDjango 17y ago
  NOTE: I generally browse with ClickToFlash active in Safari. That of course prevented the crash (until I clicked). With Safari 4.0.4 (ClickToFlash turned off) the browser was fine but the Flash plug-in died, and Safari informed me: > Flash Player (Safari Intenet plug-in) quit unexpectedly. > This report will be sent to Apple automatically. PS: 10.6.2, FWIW
- cmelbye 17y ago
  You need to have at least Snow Leopard, I believe. Apple recently moved plugins to separate processes, which prevents the entire browser from crashing. Flash will crash, but it won't take down the whole browser.
  - ubernostrum 17y ago
    Except IIRC this wasn't about security or stability; it was because they went 64-bit on everything and needed a way to have the 64-bit apps and 32-bit plugins interact sanely.

ramchip 17y ago

And much praise to the Opera team for just not crashing in the first place. I can zoom in the blue square, move around, etc. and the page is still fine after a minute or so leaving it open.

vimalg2 17y ago
This is excellent. But I wish I could see an error/warning message a la Chrome. However, i did notice a perceptible bump in memory usage via the System Monitor panel applet. The POC probably exploits a known Memory-allocation bug. [Currently running Opera 10.10/i686 Linux] Edited: Grammar
tlrobinson 17y ago
Chrome doesn't crash either, just the plugin in a separate process. Same with the latest versions of Safari, except it takes down all instances of Flash, even those in other pages, which is obviously inferior.
Niten 17y ago
Can anyone enlighten me on this? I noticed the same thing: * Viewing this page in Firefox 3.6 on Windows caused Flash to crash, taking the browser down with it. * Viewing it in Chrome on the same machine caused the Flash plugin subprocess to crash, resulting in an error message in Chrome. * However, no crash occurred in Opera. This despite the fact that 32-bit Opera on Windows does not appear to use isolated subprocesses for running NSAPI plugins. So what's going on here? Does Opera use some sort of in-process isolation to protect the browser from its plugins? Or is there perhaps some quirk of running in the Opera environment that caused this Flash crash not to be triggered like it was in Firefox and Chrome?
- vimalg2 17y ago
  Adobe Flash on Opera/Linux has always been quirky , crashy and all-round unreliable for me in the past. So, I use Opera as my pure-HTML+javascript browser, with ALL plugins, sound, animation, and Java plugins turned off in Global preferences. Going off-topic [Opera praise]: These settings instantly turn Opera into the most stable and shockingly scalable 'Research and reference' browser I've used. I only use Firefox3.5.x solely for web-dev, Google Apps, heavy-JS Web 2.0 apps, and Flash-enabled sites of course (with Flashblock as first-line-defence).

Brushfire 17y ago

It handles it less gracefully than I would have assumed. If you are running flash in multiple Chrome windows, this will corrupt ALL of them, instead of just the one visiting the page linked above. Wasnt one of Chrome's huge selling features the idea of memory independence?

windsurfer 17y ago
Flash is to blame for that one.
Groxx 17y ago
Memory independence + plugin that isn't designed to run multiple processes = plugin that can only run in one process. Imagine if Flash, forced into running twice, tried to read and write from the same cookie / any other kind of data, without any concurrency tools of any kind. Chrome has to run Flash how Flash wants to be run, because doing otherwise could cause massive problems with any plugin. This is part of why it took so long for them to make Chrome, resolving the memory independence desires with the needs of plugins requires giving some things up. It was either roughly all plugins in existence, or allow the same process to interact with multiple tabs / windows.
- wheels 17y ago
  This sounds a bit fishy to me. Of course Flash can be run from multiple processes simultaneously since it naturally runs inside of multiple browsers simultaneously, and I assume Chrome has some internal (socket based?) IPC that they're using anyway...
  - Groxx 17y ago
    Part of the difficulty is that this problem applies to all plugins. Flash may be able to handle it just fine, in which case it could just be a poor plugin, but what about any other plugin out there? Heck, Firefox uses a lock-file in your profile to prevent multiple instances from running. What's to stop a plugin from requiring such a file, writing / reading it frequently, and having no error handling because it's only designed to run singly? Ultimately, you either harden the separations to run multiple instances of it, breaking many in the process and possibly damaging data irrecoverably, or you just let the plugin decide and have backwards compatibility, which is hugely important for a browser.

chaosprophet 17y ago

Firefox 3.7a also handles this quite well, with a 'A plugin crashed' message.

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]