Thought I would pass on a word of warning about the recently released Skype 5 for Mac. Once installed, if Skype 5 is running (even in background), it will block Flash from being able to access your webcam. This breaks quite a few popular web applications. Unfortunately users will think the problem is caused by Flash, when it is actually caused by Skype.
Examples of sites and applications broken by Skype 5.
Skype has been aware of this issue since the release of the beta in November and yet they have not fixed it before the general release. According to their issue tracker they say this new behavior is "by design".
In the old Skype (2.8) this was not a problem, so something has changed. If indeed this is not a bug and is "by design" then it is a very worrying move. Imagine for a moment things were reversed. Say for instance a new release of Flash stopped all video calls working in iChat or Skype. People would be outraged, Gruber would have a heart attack.
Just to be 100% clear, Skype doesn't need to be in a video call for it to block webcam access by Flash. It simply needs to be running. The only fix is to shut down Skype then reload your browser. After this the webcam will start working again in Flash. The only long term fix is to uninstall Skype 5 and install an older version.
Here's a suggested "work-around" (if you can call it that) - it's far from ideal...
In actionscript you can:
detect whether there are webcams present on the system
examine the pixels output by the webcam
So you could add some logic along the lines of:
if (hasWebcam && imageFromWebCamIsAllBlack){
showMessage([pick your own verbiage] + ' Skype v5')
}
Not ideal, but maybe better than nothing? Beware - the list of cameras reported to Flash often includes junk (e.g. 'Google Camera Adapter 1', and more on Mac), so you need to filter those from your list. Happy to give HN contributors some pointers on how to do that, for free. My Skype handle is my HN user name with a dot inserted in the obvious place.
To be fair, Beom Soo Park just posted a follow-up comment correcting his mistake in not calling it a bug.
"I have to rectify the term I used before, this issue found to be a "bug", not "by design", We are working on the issue and will be fixed in future updates. Sorry for making confusions.
I wouldn't call it a "simple misdescription." It changed the entire meaning of the sentence and probably prevented it from getting fixed for release. It's about as big a mistake as you can make in a bug tracker.
Hopefully they'll bow to the pressure of all the UIs they broke. This is a fear that alot of us have, of course: a seemingly capricious change (meaning unforeseeable to us) breaks our UI for our customers. Good luck with that.
While we're at it, images displayed while in "Child friendly mode" ought not show ball sack. http://i.min.us/ibQ0Ci.png
God, and ALL of the top links take me to a "PAY ME MONIES" page? And I have to browse 6 at a time with nothing but a thumbnail? I'd sad I wasted the time to sign up to be frank...
"Safe" picture scanning is so hard that even Google fails at it frequently. Searching for "meat spin" on Google Images with SafeSearch Strict mode on yield several "interesting" images on just the first page..
Perhaps they could offer a small separate sort of "Flash Guard" utility for the blocking function. We consider the possibility of rogue Flash code opening the camera and/or microphone to be a security vulnerability.
Being able to block those globally is a "feature" some need.
Of control of hardware access should be by user choice only, not a side effect of an app. Counting on stored Flash settings isn't an option since many use Better Privacy (Firefox extension) or other utilities to delete Flash storage, including the settings, due to the stalking features.
Examples of sites and applications broken by Skype 5.
* http://www.dailybooth.com - core feature of the site
* http://www.facebook.com - webcam record and "take a photo" feature
* http://www.picnik.com - image editors that have import from webcam
* http://www.webcamsnapper.com - webcam photo widget used by brizzly, dailybooth, many other sites. (disclosure: my company built this app)
* adobe connect, dimdim, etc - online meeting apps
Skype has been aware of this issue since the release of the beta in November and yet they have not fixed it before the general release. According to their issue tracker they say this new behavior is "by design".
https://jira.skype.com/browse/SCM-721
In the old Skype (2.8) this was not a problem, so something has changed. If indeed this is not a bug and is "by design" then it is a very worrying move. Imagine for a moment things were reversed. Say for instance a new release of Flash stopped all video calls working in iChat or Skype. People would be outraged, Gruber would have a heart attack.
Just to be 100% clear, Skype doesn't need to be in a video call for it to block webcam access by Flash. It simply needs to be running. The only fix is to shut down Skype then reload your browser. After this the webcam will start working again in Flash. The only long term fix is to uninstall Skype 5 and install an older version.
More discussion of the issue in Skype forum: http://forum.skype.com/index.php?showtopic=782411