Bug in Adobe Flash 10 Player Plugin for Mac loses newlines in pasted text

[E-junkie_Guru]

We have discovered there is a known bug which has cropped up in Adobe's Flash Player 10 plugin for Mac browsers, where it loses any manual linebreaks from pasted-in text:

http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FP-780



This is likely to affect Mac users who have upgraded to the Flash 10 plugin who are copying from another file to paste Variants configurations, paste Stored Codes, or paste preformatted text into an Email Message field in E-junkie Seller Admin. Unfortunately, there is nothing we can do to fix or workaround the problem in the way it affects our Seller Admin. As soon as Adobe fixes this bug, linebreaks in text will suddenly start working fine again for Mac users who upgrade their Flash plugin to use the bugfixed version.



Until then, we can only recommend borrowing a PC to paste-in preformatted text from another file, or just type all your hard returns manually, which (last we read) ~should~ still work fine, as the bug apparently only affects pasted text.



If you are a Mac user and have not yet upgraded to version 10 of Adobe's Flash Player Plugin, you can avoid this problem by holding off on upgrading your Flash Player until after Adobe has fixed this bug.

[E-junkie_Guru]

UPDATE:



Adobe has announced this bug has been fixed in the latest Flash Player 10 plugin for Mac -- download it here:

http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/

[E-junkie_Guru]

UPDATE:



Ugh. Apparently this bug has returned in more recent versions of the Flash player plugin for Mac, as described in this Adobe bug report:

http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FP-5751



Fortunately, this time there appears to be an easier workaround. Compose your text using the textEdit app (a standard app included with Mac OS X), then copy from there and paste into Seller Admin. Offhand, I'm not sure if you could use textEdit as a "middleman" to sanitize text composed elsewhere (i.e., copy-paste from there into textEdit, then recopy-paste from textEdit into Seller Admin); feel free to try it and post a reply here with your results.

[gavseim]

So if you re-write things manually in text edit it works like you say. Though that does not help much since the whole idea is to be able to copy and paste.



If you copy from another product for example (so you have all your templates and email codes in place). Then paste to text edit. Then paste back into admin, it still loses all formatting. I tried various method including RTF, converting to plan text and even adding double line breaks.



Best I could do was copy into admin, then add extra line breaks before saving so that I could see where they went. It removes the line breaks from the paste, but leaves the ones that I added. Still a pain, but it got me there.



I sure you know this, but this is kind of a big deal. A lot of us are mac users and not being able to copy information properly wastes a lot of our time and makes for more errors. It begs the question. Why are we using a flash interface for all this? Tiny text boxes, slow loading. It seems totally unnecessary. Seems you could have a great HTML interface with perhaps some java and give us proper scaling input boxes as well as more features like saving product templates, and more importantly the ability to copy and paste.

[E-junkie_Guru]

Ah, so it only works if you add the linebreaks manually in textEdit, but not if you copy from another source to textEdit without redoing all the linebreaks manually? Thanks for the tip.



This recurring bug in Adobe's Flash plugin for Mac is one of many reasons we've already been working on an HTML-based replacement for our current Flash-based Admin, so once that's ready for primetime and rolls out, this Flash bug and other Flash-related issues will become moot. Thanks for your patience and understanding, and for chipping in your advice to help others with workarounds.

[gavseim]

I'll watch for the new one. Bugs aside, I for one will be thrilled to get away from the flash interface and get something more open and easy to manage... G

[E-junkie_Guru]

Just updating this thread to mention that Adobe has changed their bug-tracker system; this bug is apparently still unfixed and currently being tracked in Adobe's new bug-tracker here:

https://bugbase.adobe.com/index.cfm?event=bug&id=2926743

[collectiveeye]

I've been dealing with this bug here - our client is pulling their hair out, and I keep trying to text that has their email taken out.



The flash interface for us has become really unusable, with hundreds of items in the store. Can't wait for the non-Flash adminstration, it's really become a deal breaker here..

[collectiveeye]

I've been dealing with this bug here - our client is pulling their hair out, and I keep trying to text that has their email taken out.



The flash interface for us has become really unusable, with hundreds of items in the store. Can't wait for the non-Flash adminstration, it's really become a deal breaker here..

[gavseim]

Ya it really is kinda crazy that this has not been addressed. It's been years now. At this point it's no longer something that can be simply blamed on flash. We're talking simple essentials features here and it's time for EJ to step up.



I don't even know why why we're still on a flash interface for something like this as it's woefully outdated and clunky. It's not just this bug. No features to duplicate items, make templates, or even properly paste in text. You said a year ago that there was a new HTML interface coming yet we still don't have it.

[E-junkie_Guru]

Development is still working on the new DHTML-based Admin to replace our current Flash-based Admin. That's all I can say for now, as they run the show here and keep their plans and progress pretty close to the vest. We'll admit the new Admin project has taken much longer than anticipated; indeed, the very same cruft and complexity that have made the current Flash-based Admin nearly impossible to modify readily without breaking it in unexpected ways have also made for very challenging work in rebuilding a replacement Admin from scratch in DHTML, which will be much more amenable to ongoing modification.



A major aspect of the challenge has been that the current Admin is not "just" a user interface; it also incorporates significant layers of ActionScript that control much of the logic of how our settings and features work and interact. Rebuilding a new Admin in DHTML also means reprogramming all of that logic from scratch in other frameworks, either in browser-side JavaScript or moving chunks of the logic from the interface to new server-side scripting such as PHP. However, once this is done, new features and functionality should follow quickly and more frequently.

[gavseim]

Thanks for the update. It's very frustrating that improvements are so slow. That said I imagine it is quite a tack to move all the infrastructure over. Hopefully we'll see something soon.

[realkuhl]

Is this bug still in effect? I'm about to past 500 codes!

[realkuhl]

I have just tested and confirmed that this still doesn't work. What a load of disappointment!



Doing manual space breaks didn't work either, unless I'm supposed to leave a gap (space) between each line? I added a gap, then went back and backspaced to remove the gap thinking that might "jiggle" it to work. But it didn't - maybe I'll go back and try again with a gap between each serial number.



What a total PITA.

[E-junkie_Guru]

Have you updated to Adobe's current Flash player plugin for Mac?

http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/



The bug was in Flash 10 and has not been reported to Adobe as of Flash 11.x, and after we've suggested a Flash upgrade to various clients experiencing the bug lately, we haven't received any feedback afterwards indicating it didn't resolve the problem for them, so we can only presume the update did the trick.



If upgrading Flash doesn't solve the problem for you, we'd be glad to import the codes for you. Go ahead and set up the discount with a single Discount Code, then send your list of codes to us along with the Discount Name you'd set up:

https://www.e-junkie.com/ej/contact.php



Fortunately, the new HTML-based Admin we've been working on should be ready to replace our current Flash-based Admin within a few months, so that will eliminate the problems caused by this Flash bug.

[realkuhl]

I am with Flash 11.7 on a MacPro with OS X 10.6.8 and can confirm that the bug is still there. I sent a link to myself and it gave me all 50 codes that I pasted into the list.



I found a solution!!



If I leave a line/gap between codes, then it works fine. As I mentioned earlier, I was making a line and then backspacing it away thinking that would be enough to break the bug. It wasn't.



But adding a blank line between codes works. So I'm a happy camper again. I was really hoping that I didn't have to send people codes for this on a one-by-one email basis!



Looking forward to the HTML based setup! Woot!

[techblink]

Realkuhl, it appears that this does not work when it comes from an external source.



For example, my serial generator for my program generates the codes. I tweaked the generator to generator line breaks, but even then it does not work.



I believe you have to manually add the line breaks in the text editing program, going to try that now and update.



Edit: I tried manually adding the lines in text edit, that did not succeed so I had to move onto adding the breaks in eJunkie.