I remember the switchover from Flash 6 to Flash 7 pretty well. The distribution of the Flash player is remarkable – by many accounts, it is the most widely installed piece of software in the world! However, the rate at which folks switch from one version of the player to the next is not as fast as some of us would like.

When developing a Flash site, we take a serious look at the number of people who have a particular version of the Flash player installed before deciding on which version we’re going to develop for. We didn’t feel comfortable developing for Flash 7 until the beginning of this year, when about 80% of a site’s visitors could be expected to have that version installed. You can’t expect everyone to have the “latest and greatest,” nor can you wait forever, so you make a compromise. We typically wait six months to a year before using the latest version.

Well it’s going to be a long six months to a year this time around, because the advances in Flash 8 are nothing short of amazing. For Mac users, in particular, performance will finally be on par with Windows users. And there are so many new visual effects it’s kind of a designer’s dream come true.

Here at Needmore, we really can’t wait for it!