Adobe Captivate 3: Say Goodbye to the Flash Security Warning

by Kevin A. Siegel

 

If you have attempted to preview a Captivate project in a Web browser, there's a very good chance that you have run face-first into the perplexing Adobe Flash Security warning shown below:



If you are nodding yes at this point, and you clicked the OK in the dialog box shown above, your eLearning lesson might have performed as expected in the browser (links may not be working, animation isn't playing, etc). Of course, there's a better than 50-50 chance that the lesson didn't play correctly at all. Maybe your animations and/or FLV's failed to play?

So what's the deal with the message, and how do you get rid of it? Great questions. Read on...

According to Adobe, "The Flash Player was designed to provide security settings that do not require you to explicitly allow or deny access in most situations. Over time, as SWF and FLV content have become more sophisticated, the Flash Player has also become more sophisticated, offering users additional privacy and security protections.

"You might occasionally encounter older SWF or FLV content that was created using older security rules. In these cases, Flash Player asks you to make a decision: You can allow the content to work as its creator intended, using the older security rules; or, you can choose to enforce the newer, stricter rules. The latter choice helps ensure that you only view or play content that meets the most recent standards of security, but it may sometimes prevent older SWF or FLV content from working properly.

"When older content runs in a newer version of the player, and the Flash Player needs you to make a decision about enforcing newer rules or not, you may the dialog box above which asks your permission before allowing the older SWF or FLV content to communicate with other locations on the Internet."

Rest assured that your customers will not see the dialog box above. You'll only see the message while you're developing the Captivate project on your computer (prior to uploading the published SWF to a Web server or LMS).

If you'd like to prevent the dialog from appearing on your computer ever again, follow these steps the next time you see the dialog box.

1. Click the Settings button to open the Global Security Settings page in your Web browser (or click here to visit the site now)
   
   
2. From the Adobe Flash Player Settings Manager, click Always allow
   
   
   
   
3. Click Edit locations and then click Add location
   
   
   
   The Trust This Location dialog appears.
   
   
4. Click the Browse for folder button
   
   
   
   
5. Open the folder containing your Captivate projects
   
   

And, and... you're done (it will seem a bit anti-climatic at this point because there is no final OK or Done button to click). Close the browser window, preview the project again and the Flash Security warning will not appear.

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Do you have a Captivate production problem that's making you pull your hair out? Email your problem and let others learn solutions from your experience. 

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Want to learn more about Adobe Captivate 3? Click here.

Comments

[Rick Stone]

We see lots of forum posts where users never see the dialog, yet things such as links refuse to work. In this case, you must manually open the dialog and follow the steps in this article.

Link to dialog:

http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager04.html

Cheers... Rick :)

[dauli P]

Thanks Kevin for taking the time to explain this solution... however, I should point out that there are circumstances in which these steps provide no solution at all.
For example, what if you need to deploy a Captivate creation (in an html page) on to CD/DVD? As a professional e-Learning developer, I cannot get away from the fact that users cannot be expected to take such action to "make safe" their flash player. In otherwords, most developers in my position would not expect users to fix this even once... rather - there should be a workaround that provides for this eventuality.

I understand the reasoning behind flash security but I believe this is an example of a bug that needs attention... developers cannot deploy web based captivate projects in a localised environment. I find that very hard to swallow & have to say it's put me off using Captivate completely. Shame my company already paid for a license :(

[Don]

I was having a problem getting Captivate swf files to work from SharePoint, and the cause was the issue mentioned above regarding security.
There is a freely distributed utility from Macromedia called LocalContentUpdater. It is a single executable that will apply network privileges to any swf file. Once I used it the SharePoint issues went away. This way we didn't have to make any changes at the client end (which we wouldn't be allowed to do anyhow), just to the files themselves.
This would also work if you are deploying files on a CD or DVD.