First, I like the new UI- it's a lot crisper and cleaner than the previous versions. The rendering time seems to have increased even more than P7.

The bad news is that there is no more P4 Renderer. If you still use the P4 Renderer for your artwork, I created a tutorial on my website about how to "tune" your material settings to work with the Firefly Renderer: P4 Style Render with the FireFly Renderer. And, yes, I knew about this issue way-back-when (which is why I created this tutorial), but I couldn't say anything because of the NDA. ;)

Here are some other answers:

1. Since Poser 8 uses Flash to display the Libraries Palette, you will need to install Flash Player 10. If you don't have Flash 10, the Libraries Palette will display a message saying "Please upgrade to the latest version".

You will also have to allow FFRender.exe through your firewall, even if you don't use network rendering. I don't know if FFRender.exe has to access the internet every time you use Poser or if it just needs to connect once to update the Flash Player.

If you don't allow FFRender through your firewall, or if you don't upgrade to Flash 10, the Libraries Palette won't display for you.

2. Once the Libraries Palette is working, it's very nice. Like other people have said, switching between Runtimes is almost instant. The folders display how many items are in each one, which is a cool feature.
   The icons in the new Library are tiny, but expand to the full 91x91 pixels when you click on them. See attached screen shot.
   I haven't come across a preference setting to enlarge the size of the icons.

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