PlayPanel – Find new games | Hacker News Reader

PlayPanel – Find new games

adobe.com

32 pointsnefarioustim19 comments

Again disappointed by the traditional meaning-warp mod change of title from the original warning claiming that Flash force installs PlayPanel without notice (something I admit I have not directly confirmed, as I don't intend to risk it) to "PlayPanel - Find new games." The original claim was supposedly a direct observation that the Adobe Flash update installs PlayPanel (with or without a hidden check-box). I don't value the "documentation doesn't mention PlayPanel" comments as having much value (as it would be actually nice if Adobe warned about such things).

I'll admit: I have a fairly strong anti-Adobe prior (actually a posterior learned from previous interactions with Adobe and Adobe products). But I still think that is better than the "eager to speak comfort to power" shills/defenders. Also, in this day an age can we fairly test this claim: what if Adobe is running an A/B test on forced install (which would cause some fraction of people to see no forced install)?

Why do I feel I have a stake in this? Because I am the stupid asshole who is going to have to try and uninstall this from family computers after it breaks something (Adobe being historically very clumsy). It isn't really relevant to my experience if my relatives were forced into it or merely tricked into it.

The original title claimed that PlayPanel is automatically installed with the newest Flash update. In reality, it just tells you about PlayPanel and encourages you to go download it elsewhere.

There is no need to dilute the large body of legitimate Adobe criticisms with lies.

Can someone confirm this? Does it offer it as an optional install (a la browser toolbars)?

In case it's not clear, this comment is referring to the post's earlier title, which suggested that PlayPanel gets automatically installed when updating Flash. (Which it doesn't.)

From the: http://www.adobe.com/products/playpanel/faq.html

Q: I do not have a Facebook account. Can I use Playpanel?

A: To use Playpanel, you may use your Facebook account or your Adobe ID account.

Q: What are the system requirements for Playpanel?

A: Playpanel works best with Windows® XP, Windows Vista®, Windows 7, and Windows 8 (classic mode) operating systems.

I am surprised they list Windows XP.

This is a pretty big problem with dying proprietary solutions. They'll bundle and do other dirty tricks to keep revenue up. Heck, you can't even install flash without nagging for a slew of add-ons like some mcaffee crap. Now they're just putting the add-ons on without asking?

You can usually just untick "McAffee" when you download the installer. Unless they removed this ability, most people don't read when they download software I suppose and install McAffee on their machine.

Fun bug I discovered. Install a new Win7 machine. If you have IE8 or 9 on there, which you will because its fresh install, and you visit the flash install page before moving to IE11 you'll see the 'install mcaffee/chrome' box unchecked. Except it is checked but its rendering unchecked. You can verify this by clicking on it and then nothing happens visually, but now it is properly unchecked. Also the install size on the page will change to a smaller value.

I doubt Adobe has much incentive to fix this bug.

Is there any documentation out there on disabling this in the installer via a flag/switch? The current Administration Guide doesn't say anything about it.

If you only want to use Flash from within Chrome or IE10/IE11 then you don't have to install Flash from Adobe because it comes bundled with those browsers. So, the installer should not run at all for those users.

Other than that - I don't see an option to install Flash without PlayPanel.

I just updated to Flash 14 on Windows 7 both, other browsers and IE, and the PlayPanel was not installed along with it.

The death rattle of a bygone platform.

Bizarrely, the link to download this thing is at download.macromedia.com. A remnant of the past...

Where on that page does it say that updating Flash installs PlayPanel?

Ah. Downvoted because my comment (which I cannot now delete) refered to the original editorialized post title, not the current corrected title. The original title claimed that updating Flash auto-installed this extra app.

Ugh.

Which update did you install and on which system?

"This webpage has a redirect loop". Interesting...

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