so the geniuses at adobe have added a goddamn pain in the ass security feature into the latest flash player. file upload via FileReference must be triggered via a direct user interaction, i.e., a click.

sure, sounds harmless enough, right? WRONG.

one of the great things about flash is the ability to do lots of behind-the-scenes server roundtrips with a file. a user uploads a file, does some stuff to it, then the file is sent to a server, which does more stuff to it, then back down to the user, then back up to the server, and so on. now, the upload-to-server has to be directly approved by the user.

this has broken a bunch of things all across the web. we found a fix for our make me super campaign (just needed to rework some event listeners and the way messaging between objects worked), but i imagine there may be some situations where a fix is impossible without changing UI.

entire businesses have been built around flash. for adobe to make such a change — regardless of intent — and then completely ignore the pained screams of the development community is a very bad decision. while i think microsoft couldn’t develop their way out of a wet paper bag, this provides a tiny opening for silverlight. which, of course, microsoft will proceed to fuck up in record time.

many developers seem to get lost in their own world, assuming that what’s good enough for them is good enough for everyone. you see this on any message board where a person asks a question:

Q: “How can I install subversion under cPanel?”

A: “Don’t use subversion, use [random ass open source piece of shit]:”

A: “Why are you using cPanel? I prefer command-line for everything, because I live in my mother’s basement.”

guess what, guys? some of us have businesses to run. the web has changed since netscape navigator 1.0, believe it or not.