Where is the Flash Player 8.5 Alpha Download?

As you probably know, we launched Macromedia Labs yesterday by releasing alpha versions of Flex Builder 2, Flex Framework 2 and Flash Player 8.5. However, there has been some questions and confusion over where the Flash Player download is.

The Flash Player installers for both Mac and Windows are included within the Flex Builder downloads. If you are on Windows and are installing the standalone version of Flex Builder, the installer will prompt you to install the players.

If you are on Mac, then you can get the installers by downloading the Flex Builder 2 Eclipse plugin zip file. The installers are located within the Zip file.

Standalone players are included in both Flex Builder installs (standalone and plugin).

So, why did we make it so difficult to find and install the player?

Well, there was a rather heated discussion about this internally at Macromedia. There was a concern that since this is an alpha quality player, that there were probably some compatibility issues that we did not know about, and there were concerns about developer / user backlash if existing content stopped working. Because of this, the decision was made to not have direct downloads of the player installer at launch.

We are considering making direct download of the alpha player available (via the labs site) in the near future.

This would still only be available behind the labs login (open to anyone). Any thoughts on this?