Adobe Flash only works sometimes

[Amadeus W.M.]

On Sun, 24 Aug 2008 16:23:05 -0700, Lonni J Friedman wrote:

> Greetings,
> I've got a few Fedora9(x86) systems with Adobe's flash plugin installed.
>  For most websites, the flash plugin works just fine (Youtube, etc). 
> However, there are some websites where flash doesn't work at all.  When
> I end up at a website where its not working, I have a big white square
> where the flash content should be, or sometimes, I get a nasty error
> that I need to install Flash.
> 
>>From what I can tell, this appears to be due to some mime-type
> handling retardation in Firefox3.  If I go to Edit -> Preferences ->
> Applications, there are two different entries for Flash, "Flash video"
> and "SWF file".  The "SWF file" entry is auto-populated with "Use
> Shockwave Flash", however the "Flash video" entry keeps defaulting to
> "Movie player (default)", and Shockwave Flash isn't even a choice in the
> menu.
> 
> I've (re)installed Firefox-2.x for debugging purposes, and the same
> exact flash plugin works perfectly there, so this has to be something
> specific to firefox 3.
> 
> Anyone run across this?
> 
> --
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ L.
> Friedman netllama at gmail.com
> LlamaLand https://netllama.linux-sxs.org


I've had the same problem for some time and I kind of gave up on it. CNN 
is one notorious site that doesn't work for me. Invariably, any video 
either blanks out or tries to skip to the next one in the list. However, I 
noticed that if I reload the page several times, it eventually plays. 
That's the only way to watch cnn video for me. Strange, isn't it? Google 
video mostly works, occasionally though I run into clips where I see the 
same behavior (probably linked to google video from other sites).

I mentioned about this problem long ago and I got no useful hint, 
unfortunately.