For anyone having the problem where there static text does not appear in their
Flash 8 movie, Adobe's solution is to reencode the movie in Flash 7 format.

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/knowledgebase/index.cfm?id=144b4be2

My question is... how is this useful? If the blatant answer is to force us,
Flash developers, to encode movies in Flash 7 format rather than Flash 8 (or
eventually Flash 9), then there is no incentive for us to ever purchase or
develop in a version of Flash greater than Flash 7, because no one will be able
to see the movie clearly!!!

The user doesn?t get a warning or a prompt to download Flash 8 automatically;
they get a page with no text.

So, by Adobe?s admission ? see the knowledge base article ? having any version
of Flash greater than 7 is a waste. You won?t be able to use any of the
enhanced features, because you still have to encode the movie in Flash 7 to see
any text.

The jump from Flash 7 to Flash 8 was much larger than usual, so there are more
things to take into consideration. BUT, it's really no different than any
other player update. Plugin updates are a fact of life that users have to
accept, otherwise technology will never evolve. As a designer, you have two
options:

1) Design all your stuff in the older player formats.

2) Use player detection (which you should be using anyway) and encourage users
to upgrade to the proper plugin, if they don't already have it (I highly
recommend http://blog.deconcept.com/swfobject/).

Don't get mad at Adobe. Every software company has to deal with plugin
updates. It's a fact of life. Eventually, everyone will update their player
and we can all live happily ever after. :grin;