The information Adobe is providing right now is for developers, IT departments and Web administrators to better prepare for the next update to Flash Player. End users do not need to take actions at this time but should update to the latest player in April upon its release.

The Adobe Developer Connection article describes who and what types of content may be impacted, the changes, and what you should do immediately to implement any necessary changes to ensure a seamless transition when the updated Player launches.

For those of you whom the following situations apply, please read the Adobe Developer Connection article in detail:
* Use of sockets or XMLSockets, regardless of the domain the SWF is connecting to
* Use of addRequestHeader or URLRequest.requestHeaders in any network API call when sending or loading data cross-domain OR Provides access to content on remote domains as a web service provider
* Use of SWFs that are exported for Flash Player 7 (SWF7) or below that communicate with the hosting HTML by any means
* Use of '"javascript:'" through network APIs to communicate outside a SWF

Preparing for the April 2008 Flash Player 9 Security Update

For more information about Flash Player security, visit
Flash Player Security and Privacy page
Flash Player Security section of the Adobe Developer Connection

To keep up to date, check:
http://weblogs.macromedia.com/mxna
Justin's blog (Sr. Product Manager, Flash Player

Thanks to everyone who tested and provided feedback on the Adobe Labs beta!

The first row is how we present the data on the website. It tells you the percentage of people that can view a SWF of that version. The second row, is the % of the population with that player version installed (the delta between v and v+1).

This was a ginormous release for us, and for you. This release brings:
* New audio/video options with H.264/HE-AAC codec support
* Improved Performance through multi-core support for rendering, hardware scaling in full-screen, multi-threaded video decoding, a new algorithm for image scaling, and the Flash Player cache for local caching of common platform components to reduce SWF sizes and app loading times
* Support for full-screen mode for Linux
* MSAA Accessibility support for the plugin
* Mac OS X Leopard support
* And bug fixes

WHEW!

Resources
* Take a look at our updated product page! We've got the new logo, an updated look and feel, and an updated datasheet. The feature demo has also been updated to include an H.264 video clip and full screen demo.
* Press Release
* Release Notes
* Check the Dev Center for new articles and updates
* Check the support center for new Technotes

Yes, Flash Player 9 is Leopard-compatible and we will continue to work with Apple on any outstanding issues. We're working on a player specific technote to call out known issues, such as the one with FileReference upload/download which will be fixed in the upcoming Moviestar release.

Aral's blog on the Astro keynote

I am very pleased with how the demos came through, and we have a lot of people to thank for pulling them together so that we could show them to you:
* Creating assets and generally busting his a** to get the demos together: Justin Everett-Church, Sr. Product Manager for Flash Player!!!
* Text demo of bidi/complex scripts: Jerry Hall, Eric Muller, Sairus Patel in Core Tech. Core Tech is working closely with our team on the layout engine. We are talking about some super text gurus!
* Adobe Edge: Robin Briggs, who is leading the text component library engineering effort
* 3D: Chris Nuuja, Flash Player engineering, for getting us a build with the new 3D APIs (while we're working on Moviestar)
* Kevin Goldsmith, Bob Archer, and Elba Sobrino (and probably more from the Adobe Image Foundation team) for their awesome work on the Hydra language, the toolkit, sample filters and getting it up on Adobe Labs today

Why, yes we do!

The Flash Player Administration Guide went live August 27th. It covers the environment, installation, admin settings, user settings, and security considerations. Please send feedback!

The first row is how we present the data on the website. It tells you the percentage of people that can view a SWF of that version. The second row, is the % of the population with that player version installed (the delta between v and v+1).

* Looks like people finally retired their old machines and are upgrading to more current hardware :-)

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"Good point", I said. Then promptly forgot to deal with it in the flurry of the standard daily Flash Player activities. Since the community is eager to see what we will show at MAX, and is already starting to talk about it, I wanted to make sure that I publicly confirmed that the codename is Astro.

We've obviously been hard at work since Flash Player 9 released in June 2006 (seems soooooo long ago). Tamarin was open sourced in November, the Linux player was released in January. We added support for Intel Macs and Vista. We rolled out full screen mode. And of course, the latest Flash Player 9 "Moviestar" beta has delivered H.264 and AAC support, along with performance enhancements and other useful bits. All these things make the time fly by.

But now it's time to start focusing on life after "Moviestar," and we have more bunnies to pull out of our hats. Our platform has been behind some of the most creative content on the web since Flash first hit the web over ten years ago, and we intend to continue delivering the capabilities you need to deliver on the fresh, innovative, and mind-blowing ideas that you all have floating around in your heads. More on that...at Adobe MAX 2007. Come and check out what we're thinking about for Astro and beyond!

We have our data, but also we hear anecdotal stats from our customers that validate the penetration study we run every quarter. I always try to remind folks that the Millward Brown study is sampling to mirror an general internet-connected PC population, so your site's demographics are likely to differ. But for large sites with broad reach and a broad customer base, the numbers you get should be fairly consistent with the numbers we publish. Use our numbers as a general guide on the penetration of Flash Player, but the best way for you to know what the penetration is for YOUR particular audience is to check it yourself.

So here is a basic guideline that you can use to project penetration of a particular release:
@3 months = 30 - 40%
@6 months = 55 - 65
@9 months = 80 - 85%
@12 months = 90+%

So working with the release date, you can figure out the penetration of a specific version and later. For example, Flash Player 9r28 with the full screen feature went out in November. That's about 9 months since initial release. Therefore, PCs that have 9r28 or a later version should be around 80%. Check your site, and see how that matches up for your audience.

Again, I said this is the "typical" trend. If every major site in the world decided to start pushing Moviestar the day we launch, the penetration rate would be faster in the first two periods. The trend tends to flatten out once it hits 80% on it's way to 90% and beyond.

To find out about the player dot release enhancements, fixes and versions, visit the release notes here. Unfortunately, they don't have release dates (maybe a good thing to add moving forward, now that I mention it) but I believe I've blogged availability for every release so far for Flash Player 9.

Flash Player penetration study page here. Note, the June data is horribly late and I apologize for that. We're working on getting it posted. The Flash Player 9 penetration was at 90.3% for mature markets, v8 was at 98.5%, and v6 and v7 were at 99.3%. Putting it in other terms, it means:

90.3% of PCs can view SWF9 or below
98.5% of PCs can view SWF8 or below
99.3% of PCs can view SWF 7 or below, and we can drop testing of SWF6 moving forward.

And if you don't like that presentation, the above can also be read as:
90.3% of PCs have Flash Player 9 installed
8.2% of PCs have Flash Player 8 installed
0.8% of PCs have Flash Player 7 installed

Fun with numbers :-) Hope this helps.