There are two important updates coming that could change the way your visitors experience your site. Now is the time to test those changes for yourself.

First, Flash Player 8.5 will be released soon, and if the adoption rate in any way mirrors the speed with which Flash 8 was adopted (we’re up to 84% on our site!) then this is going to matter right away. 8.5 will be a big update, and there’s no guarantee that existing code (yours) will behave the same as it does under Flash 8. So download the Flash Player 8.5 Public Beta and try it — now! There’s still time for you to alert the Flash team to any problems you discover, but the window is closing.

Second, IE updates are coming. Unless your visitor profile is VERY unusual, the majority of your site’s viewers use some version of Internet Explorer (currently 53% of visitors to our site, for example.) As you’ve certainly heard by now, the next round of updates to IE will include a change in how “Active Content” is treated (including Flash, Shockwave, QuickTime, etc.) In other words, your site may start behaving differently for a large percentage of your users, so it’s time to investigate whether it will affect you and decide how to address it.

One way to avoid worrying about the IE change is to load your SWFs using Geoff Stearns’ FlashObject detection and embed script, which we’ve been using anyway because it solves so many other problems. (Thanks, Geoff!)

Update: As Geoff notes in the comments, he has been providing updated details on this issue since December, so take advantage of his expertise!

A couple other links we stumbled across today which you may find handy in this context: How to use FlashObject with Frames; How to run multiple versions of IE concurrently.

Any other good resources people should know about?

We’ve found updates on several of the topics we’ve blogged about recently, so rather than a dozen individual posts, let’s catch up all at once, shall we?

Mix06: New impressions from Guy Watson, Pete Barr-Watson, Aral Balkan and Grant Skinner. See also our previous linkful posts. After reading all these, one thing becomes clear: Microsoft already owns the hearts and minds of Flash developers… who play video games. Seriously, have you ever heard of such a Halo-happy bunch?

Flex 2.0 beta 2: Basically just stay tuned to Mike Chambers’ blog. Recent news of note includes updated Open Source AS3 libs; news that the SDK is available for download separately (useful for Mac and Linux developers) and also free by the way; and a link to a great article outlining the differences between betas 1 and 2. See our original beta 2 post for more links.

Competitions: We mentioned a couple Flex competitions in that beta 2 post as well; we have since been alerted to another Flex competition from Ray Camden — this one related to Cold Fusion. And of course we must mention Turdhead’s ActionScript Poetry Contest — submissions have closed, but check out the entries and be ready to pick your favorite when online voting begins later this week.

Flash on PSP: We already told you this was officially happening; the question since has been when and what version? A recent rumor suggested it would be Flash Lite 2, but the consensus now tends towards Flash 6 instead. While somewhat disappointing (and possibly a downgrade form the homebrew version, which claims Flash 7 support), it’s no surprise when you hear that the PSP’s browser is NetFront from Access, and one of the available updates for that browser all along has been… a Flash 6 plugin. Hopefully if this release is a success, further updates will come later.

There, that should keep you busy for a while.

If it’s Monday where you are, you may be as confused as we were about this cool Flow thing everyone is talking about. An addictive gaming experience AND a Flex 2 mashup app? Wow!

Turns out to be two different things.

Flow the game lets you swim a glowing alien pincher-bug through a blue organic soup, eating and evolving as you go.

Flow the Flex 2 mashup application was demonstrated during the Adobe Keynote at Flashforward2006 Seattle, and “allow[s] you to easily search and move through different sets of online data and media.” It will be released with the next Flex 2 beta, but for now Mike Chambers has some screenshots and more info.

But what if you did merge the two? Your little bug could swim around eating tags, and each tag would take you to another depth of related tags, media, etc, the consumption of which would evolve your info-seeking critter…

OK, back to work.

As a followup to the previous post recapping Mix06, Lynda Weinman found some more interesting reviews from the community:

Mike Chambers Downey (Sorry Mikes!), Robert Reinhardt, Eric Meyer, and Jeffrey Zeldman, who chose not to attend but posted his impressions anyway. :-)

And here’s a picture of Lynda Weinman and Bill Gates from their lunch together:

We have another followup interview from Flashforward2006 Seattle: Tim Reha of Venture Allstars interviewing Andrew Wright of Smilebox.

Here’s a direct link to the interview (12:33, 4.4 MB, MP3). Listen…