Re: SOT: Default Flash behavior when crossdomain.xml is absent

2010-03-12 Thread Dave Watts

 Straws appreciated and accepted.  I don't think that's the case though.  I
 opened MS Fiddler and hit on of our pages myself.  (All of the streaming
 content on our site uses the same dynamic page and the same SWF player.  The
 SWF player is not located on the CDN).  This is what Fiddler showed me:

 Request for www.mysite.com/thePage.cfm
 Request for www.mysite.com/player.swf
 Request for www.mycdn.com/crossdomain.xml (Returned 404)
 Request for www.mycdn.com/theFile.mp3

 It defies logic.  By all rights flash should have shut down the SWF and
 never allowed it to access the last file.

 Hmm, a bit more Googling, and apparently that isn't always necessarily the
 case.  According to this knowledge base article, Flash differentiates
 between simply playing an MP3 and extracting data from it.
 http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/963/50c96388.html

 This article appears to say that flash WILL allow an MP3 from another domain
 to be played, but will stop short of allowing you to extract data from it
 (like ID3 tags) without a crossdomain.xml file.  Interesting... I'm not sure
 if that is affecting me or not.  I'm using the JWPlayer and I'm pretty
 certain it doesn't do anything special to the MP3s.

Well there you go, I've never tried loading MP3s specifically and
didn't know there was a policy exception for them. And I have no idea
what's in an MP3 that JWPlayer would read sometimes and not read other
times.

But can't you just go ahead and create a crossdomain file and avoid
this problem altogether?

Dave Watts, CTO, Fig Leaf Software
http://www.figleaf.com/
http://training.figleaf.com/

Fig Leaf Software is a Veteran-Owned Small Business (VOSB) on
GSA Schedule, and provides the highest caliber vendor-authorized
instruction at our training centers, online, o

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RE: SOT: Default Flash behavior when crossdomain.xml is absent

2010-03-12 Thread brad

 But can't you just go ahead and create a crossdomain file and avoid
 this problem altogether?


Of course, and I already have.  My personality is such that I like to
find out exactly why things were broke-- not just wiggle wires until it
turns on, shrug, and continue.  :)

~Brad


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SOT: Default Flash behavior when crossdomain.xml is absent

2010-03-11 Thread brad

Quick question-- I swear I've Googled the crap out of this and for the
life of me I can't get a definitive answer.

We have two domains.
www.oursite.com
www.ourcdn.com

We have a SWF player hosted at www.oursite.com which loads mp3s (among
other things) from www.ourcdn.com.
www.ourcdn.com does NOT have a crossdomain.xml policy file.

Most of our users have no issues with the flash player loading the
off-site content.  Several people however report an error that I
assume is Flash refusing to load the off-site content due to the lack of
a cross domain policy.

The obvious answer here is I need to create a crossdomain.xml file on
www.ourcdn.com that specifies www.oursite.com as a valid location that
can load its content via flash.

However, in the name of curiosity, I would like to figure out which of
my users are affected and why.

Can anyone tell me what the default behavior of flash 7, 8, 9, 10, etc
is if there is no cross domain policy _on_ the server hosting the
content?  Does it deny by default or allow?  Based on what I am seeing,
I assume some versions allow by default, while others deny but for the
life of me I can't find conclusive documentation for all versions of
Flash that compares their behavior.  All I can find of the Internet is
eleventy-billion how-to's on creating a policy new.  (thanks but I
already know how)

Thanks.

~Brad


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Re: SOT: Default Flash behavior when crossdomain.xml is absent

2010-03-11 Thread Dave Watts

 Quick question-- I swear I've Googled the crap out of this and for the
 life of me I can't get a definitive answer.

 We have two domains.
 www.oursite.com
 www.ourcdn.com

 We have a SWF player hosted at www.oursite.com which loads mp3s (among
 other things) from www.ourcdn.com.
 www.ourcdn.com does NOT have a crossdomain.xml policy file.

 Most of our users have no issues with the flash player loading the
 off-site content.  Several people however report an error that I
 assume is Flash refusing to load the off-site content due to the lack of
 a cross domain policy.

 The obvious answer here is I need to create a crossdomain.xml file on
 www.ourcdn.com that specifies www.oursite.com as a valid location that
 can load its content via flash.

 However, in the name of curiosity, I would like to figure out which of
 my users are affected and why.

 Can anyone tell me what the default behavior of flash 7, 8, 9, 10, etc
 is if there is no cross domain policy _on_ the server hosting the
 content?  Does it deny by default or allow?  Based on what I am seeing,
 I assume some versions allow by default, while others deny but for the
 life of me I can't find conclusive documentation for all versions of
 Flash that compares their behavior.  All I can find of the Internet is
 eleventy-billion how-to's on creating a policy new.  (thanks but I
 already know how)

My understanding is that the default behavior is the same for Flash 7
and higher. It should deny access from your swf to content fetched
from another domain unless that domain has the appropriate cross
domain policy file allowing content to be fetched from the domain
containing your swf.

So, I suspect that there's something else going on. Maybe some (most?)
requests are actually being served from servers within your CDN
initially, rather than from your original domain. For example, if I go
to www.microsoft.com, I'm actually going to
someserver.www.ms.akadns.net. Perhaps that's the default behavior for
many of your users? I'm kind of grasping at straws here.

Dave Watts, CTO, Fig Leaf Software
http://www.figleaf.com/
http://training.figleaf.com/

Fig Leaf Software is a Veteran-Owned Small Business (VOSB) on
GSA Schedule, and provides the highest caliber vendor-authorized
instruction at our training centers, online, or on

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Re: SOT: Default Flash behavior when crossdomain.xml is absent

2010-03-11 Thread Brad Wood

 My understanding is that the default behavior is the same for Flash 7
 and higher. It should deny access from your swf to content fetched
 from another domain unless that domain has the appropriate cross
 domain policy file allowing content to be fetched from the domain
 containing your swf.

Yeah, that seems to align with what I've been finding.  Thing is, that's not 
what's been happening.

 So, I suspect that there's something else going on. Maybe some (most?)
 requests are actually being served from servers within your CDN
 initially, rather than from your original domain. For example, if I go
 to www.microsoft.com, I'm actually going to
 someserver.www.ms.akadns.net. Perhaps that's the default behavior for
 many of your users? I'm kind of grasping at straws here.

Straws appreciated and accepted.  I don't think that's the case though.  I 
opened MS Fiddler and hit on of our pages myself.  (All of the streaming 
content on our site uses the same dynamic page and the same SWF player.  The 
SWF player is not located on the CDN).  This is what Fiddler showed me:

Request for www.mysite.com/thePage.cfm
Request for www.mysite.com/player.swf
Request for www.mycdn.com/crossdomain.xml (Returned 404)
Request for www.mycdn.com/theFile.mp3

It defies logic.  By all rights flash should have shut down the SWF and 
never allowed it to access the last file.

Hmm, a bit more Googling, and apparently that isn't always necessarily the 
case.  According to this knowledge base article, Flash differentiates 
between simply playing an MP3 and extracting data from it.
http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/963/50c96388.html

This article appears to say that flash WILL allow an MP3 from another domain 
to be played, but will stop short of allowing you to extract data from it 
(like ID3 tags) without a crossdomain.xml file.  Interesting... I'm not sure 
if that is affecting me or not.  I'm using the JWPlayer and I'm pretty 
certain it doesn't do anything special to the MP3s.

~Brad 


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