What does '8Ball is focused on designers' mean?

There has been some discussions over the past couple of days around 8Ball (the next full release of Flash) and what its focus is going to be.

I wanted to make a quick post, and just clarify something:

8Ball is focused on designers.

What exactly does that mean? It means that the past 2 releases of Flash have been focused almost solely on developers, and that it is time that we once again show some love to designers. Does this mean that 8Ball will have no developer features? No, not at all (there is going to be some very cool stuff). It does mean that one of the primary themes though are designer focused. What are the primary themes?

• Performance / Stability / Usability
• Expressiveness

Again, just to repeat, this doesn’t mean we are dropping developers, or that we are not going to have any features for developers. It does mean that we are spending a lot of time adding new features to Flash that will once again make it the top tool and platform for creating expressive content. Regardless of the focus, this is something that will benefit both designers and developers.

We are really focusing on building a great platform for creating content and applications (more info on this in the coming weeks and months). Flash Developers are vital to the success of that platform.