TechNote

Issue

Starting with the Adobe Flash Player 8 release, new versions of Flash Player are no longer available for Microsoft Windows 95, Microsoft Windows NT, or classic Macintosh operating systems. This unavailability is due to enhancements and features added in Flash Player 8 that cannot be supported on older operating systems.

December 18, 2007.

Starting with the release of the December 18, 2007 security bulletin, APSB07-20, Adobe is discontinuing support of Adobe Flash Player 7 and will no longer provide security updates. Adobe recommends that all Flash Player users on supported systems update to the most recent version of the player through the Flash Player Download Center. 

Adobe's support policy for Flash Player is to support the current and previous major release. Flash Player 7 was updated with security fixes as a courtesy to customers on Microsoft Windows 95, Microsoft NT, and Macintosh Classic operating systems, and for Linux and Solaris customers prior to the availability of Flash Player 9.

Those who use an unsupported configuration for the latest player or who  wish to continue to use Adobe Flash Player 7 will be able to find the archived installers in the Archived Flash Player TechNote. The information in this TechNote will continue to apply to all developers testing Flash Player 7.

Reason

The features added to Flash Player utilize the technology in the latest operating systems for performance, functionality, and efficiency. These subsystems are not included in the older operating systems. Additionally, manufacturers will no longer fix issues in these operating systems, which makes it impossible to address Flash Player issues with root causes in the operating system.

Solution

We realize that, in some cases, there is not only a desire but a necessity to run Flash Player on unsupported machines. In this situation, we recommend installing the latest Flash Player available for your operating system (Flash Player 7r73) to take advantage of the most recent security and stability updates to Flash Player 7.

Windows Flash Player 7:

• Internet Explorer: Download (577 K)
• Netscape: Download (711 K)

Macintosh Classic Flash Player 7:

• All Browsers: Download (678 K)

Flash Player 7 installers for Linux and Solaris are available from the Archived Flash Player TechNote.