So basically I have been having problems with many people not being able to see
the navigation buttons in flash files. I use flash 8 for the publishing, and
they are able to see the animations, but not the buttons, or text, or even be
able to click on the buttons.

If i publish out at flash 7 everything works fine. The problem is that I would
like to use some of the new features in flash 8, so i lose these when i
down-publish.

Any ideas? I would think that if they can view the movies, then they must have
flash 8, but is this a bug in early versions of flash 8?

You need to use Flash Player 8 to view content published for Flash Player 8.
If not, then (especially if you use new features) text etc won't appear.
Old Flash players do not understand the many new SWF file tags introduced in
FP8.
--
Jeckyl