Late last week, Adobe announced an update to its Flash Player product for Windows only. Flash Player was updated from 11.3.300.268 to 11.3.300.270. The minor update addresses a crash with the Adobe Flash Player Update Service (FlashPlayerUpdateService.exe). The update, however, is not available from Adobe’s Product Download Center.
Please be aware that this release is not available from the Product Download Center (http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer) which will continue to provide 11.3.300.268. We realize that this might cause confusion for some users. Due to the severity of this issue, we decided to make this build available immediately to help customers affected by this bug. Due to logistical issues and time constraints, we were unable to update the release on the Product Download Center. The next release of Flash Player will correct this disparity.
Instead, you can download the ActiveX and Plugin versions of Flash directly.
- Flash Player for ActiveX (Internet Explorer)
- Flash Player Plug-In (All other browsers)
You may also notice that with this update Adobe has unified the 32-bit and 64-bit installers into a single package. Right now, the web browser you wish to use is the only split for downloads instead of also needing to download the appropriate x86 or x64 installers. Compared to the stand-alone 32-bit version of the installer, the unified installer is an increase in file size while reducing in size compared to the 64-bit version of the installer.
Confirming with an Adobe employee that the unified installer was the way of the future and one version wasn’t just left behind for this minor update, he also mentioned that a personal hope is to further unify the installation packages to include both Internet Explorer’s ActiveX and plugin-based browser versions in a single package at some point. Something to look forward to for IT pros everywhere.
For more details, you can review the Flash Player 11.3 release notes and the announcement posting.