Here’s one more new Flash 8 feature worth mentioning.

UPDATE: My bad - I didn’t realize that this was already in Flash MX 2004 - I guess I just never saw it in there, so I assumed it was new.

Ever have a swf that doesn’t work because you happened to use something in your code that isn’t supported in the version of Flash you’re targeting? A while ago I was helping one of our designers here fix some code where he was trying to use the MovieClipLoader class, and it just wouldn’t work. After spending about 15-20 minutes of me checking and rechecking his code, trying to determine where the issue was, he asked me if it mattered what version of Flash he was building for. Turns out he was targeting Player 6, so of course, it wouldn’t work.

Flash 8 now adds highlighting of incompatiple ActionScript in the Actions Panel, based on the Player version specified in your Publish Settings. It won’t highlight the actual ActionScript in the text-editor pane, but in the pane to the left of the text editor, the incompatible methods and classes will be highlighted. In this screenshot, my Publish Settings are set to build for Player 6.

Of course, the info on what versions of the Player support a particular method or class are listed in the Help Docs with each method/class/property etc. but this makes for a nice quick reference.