"We believe the launch of Flash Player 8 is one of the most important developments in rich media design and delivery on the Internet. And our customers are telling us the same thing," said Douglas McIntyre, chairman, president and CEO of On2 Technologies, as he announced today that On2 is launching an incentives program to reward customers for early adoption of its newest line of Flix encoding tools for Macromedia Flash Player 8.

As part of the incentives program, McIntyre said, customers who pre-purchase the new version of Flix Pro 8 will be able to take advantage of a special, discounted price and will also receive the current version of Flix Pro to use until Flix Pro 8 is officially released. The new versions of On2's Flix 8 Flash video encoding tool includes the Company's VP6 video encoding technology, ensuring the highest image quality Flash Video output in the industry.

"We've launched this incentives program because we want this extremely excited community of more than one million Flash developers to immediately start thinking about Flash Video for Flash Player 8. This program puts the highest quality encoding tools right in their toolbox when the Flash Player 8 is available," McIntyre added.

Just one day after the "biggest software launch in Macromedia history," Betsey Nelson (pictured), the company's executive vice president and CFO, Macromedia, will deliver a presentation on behalf of the company at the Pacific Crest 2005 Technology Forum in Colorado today. The presentation is scheduled from 2:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. PDT.

To listen to the webcast of the presentation, interested SYS-CON readers can visit the Macromedia Investor Relations website at www.macromedia.com/macr/.

Flash Player 8 is part of the Studio 8 suite, launched yesterday Live on SYS-CON.TV. Studio 8 is the topic of a very special August issue of MX Developer's Journal, SYS-CON's world-beating magazine for Macromedia web designers, developers, video professionals, and graphic artists.

The issue contains a fantastic line-up of articles by MXDJ's editorial team, including:

Special Studio 8 Issue Editorial - by Jeremy Geelan 
Cover Feature: Studio 8 - An Overview - by Charles Brown
Studio 8 - Flash: The Evolution of Flash - by Arthur Phillips
Studio 8 - Flash 8 Professional - by Tom Green
Studio 8 - Dreamweaver 8 - by Elaine Harrell
Studio 8 - Fireworks 8 - by Joyce Evans
Studio 8 - Contribute 3 - by Charles Brown
Studio 8 - FlashPaper 2 - by Jeremy Geelan
Studio 8 From the Inside - Q&A with Mike Downey, Jim Guerard, Maureen Keating, & Jennifer Taylor 
"Studio Hall of Fame" - by MXDJ News Desk
Director - My Magic 8-Ball Says - by Andrew Phelps

In a unique collaboration with Macromedia, the Special Studio 8 Issue is being made available in French, Korean, Traditional Chinese, and Simplified Chinese, in addition to the regular worldwide English language edition.

Copies will be widely available at MAX 2005, which is being held October 16-19, 2005, in the Anaheim Convention Center, Anaheim, CA.

• New Macromedia Flash Player Runtime Is "The Driving Force Behind the Flash Platform"
• Powerhouse of New Features Unleashed by Macromedia in Flash Professional 8
• Macromedia Unveils Studio 8 – with Jim Guerard
• Microsoft .NET In A Flash, A New Tool Lets .NET Developers Write Flash Applications
• Macromedia Flash - How To Use the Singleton Design Pattern
• Macromedia Unveils Studio 8 Live on SYS-CON.TV
• Macromedia Unveils Studio 8: "A Huge Leap Forward," Says CEO Stephen Elop
• Flash Player 8 Will Rock Digital World: "A Watershed Event"
• SYS-CON Media Presents "The 8 Issue" of MXDJ