Flash Player 8 Beta: Test your content!

This has been all over the aggregators lately, but I'm mentioning it again because it's very important.

Macromedia has released a public beta of the next Flash Player, version 8. The beta is intended for developers and content creators to make sure that their existing Flash content runs as expected in the new player version.

While people have been trying to discover / use the new features, and some have succeeded with working demos, let me just reiterate what JD was saying all day yesterday on mailing lists:

New features will be documented when the new authoring tool nears release. Right now the critically important goal is backwards-compatibility testing... that's the thing we've got to be confident of before release to the general public, thanks.

The Player is much harder to update in the hands of the general public than in the hands of developers. Now is the time to make sure all compatibility bugs are found / fixed, before the Player is officially released into the wild. Although, Ted posted a great read about the new update process.

Do your part, download the Flash Player 8 Public Beta and make sure your existing content works as expected. If you find any compatibility bugs, please submit them here: http://www.macromedia.com/go/fp_public_beta_feedback .

Also, if you're looking for a site to test the beta player against, check out Good Experience Games.