Macromedia announces Flash Player 8 and Flash Professional 8

Macromedia, Inc. has announced a public beta for Macromedia Flash Player 8, the next-generation Flash Player client runtime. Flash Player is a high performance, lightweight runtime with cross-platform capabilities, including major operating systems, browsers, mobile phones, and smart devices.

According to the company the Flash Player 8 offers enhanced expressive capabilities, a new advanced text-rendering engine, new video codec, 8-bit alpha channel video, and improvements to performance and security. To date the software (including its previous versions) has been installed on over 600 million Internet-connected desktops and mobile devices.

In addition to the Flash Player client runtime, the Flash Platform includes Flash Lite, a lightweight profile of the Flash Player runtime optimized for mobile devices. It also includes a robust programming model, time-tested development tools, dedicated server technology, integrated solutions, and the support of major systems integration partners, ISVs, and OEMs.

Also announced was the Macromedia Flash Professional 8, the latest version of the Flash authoring tool used by designers and developers to create rich interactive content for websites, interactive presentations, and mobile devices.

Flash Professional 8 marks a significant release that encompasses major advancements in expressive tools, video, quality user experiences, and mobile content authoring. Flash Professional 8 is part of Macromedia Studio 8, a software suite that also includes Macromedia Dreamweaver 8, Macromedia Fireworks 8, Macromedia Contribute 3, and Macromedia FlashPaper 2.

The Flash Professional 8 environment also includes core tools to aid developers who want to create and deploy content and applications for mobile devices using the Macromedia Flash Lite player. Flash Professional 8 includes interactive device emulators that make it easy for developers to build content once and test it on a wide variety of devices using preset, updatable profiles for more than 70 mobile devices enabled with Flash Lite.