Adobe Flash, often referred to as Macromedia Flash (Adobe bought out Macromedia in 1995) or just Flash, is a multi-platform web multimedia tool that enables the creation of rich media content including games, animations, and applications. It can also be used as a container for audio/video content.
Adobe Flash has two components – Adobe Flash Player, the application for playing Flash files, and Adobe Flash Professional, the application for Flash development.
Flash Player is available as both a standalone program and as a browser plug-in. The Flash Player plug-in is available for nearly all popular internet browsers.
Flash first came on the scene in 1996 and it quickly became the preferred way to distribute video, audio, and animation in an interactive fashion.
Flash supports both raster and vector based graphics and also a programming language known as ActionScript. In addition it can be used to stream video and audio content. The Flash player is available for most computer platforms including PC, MAC and Linux, and increasingly on mobile devices such as phones and PDAs.
Adobe Flash Professional is classed as an integrated development environment, whilst the Flash Player is a virtual machine that parses and plays the Flash content, created by Adobe Flash Professional. It is accepted to refer to both the Adobe Flash Professional authoring environment and Adobe Flash Player as just “Flash”.
Adobe Flash Professional is classed as an integrated development environment, whilst the Flash Player is a virtual machine that parses and plays the Flash content, created by Adobe Flash Professional. It is accepted to refer to both the Adobe Flash Professional authoring environment and Adobe Flash Player as just “Flash”.
Flash first came on the scene in 1996 and it quickly became the preferred way to distribute video, audio, and animation in an interactive fashion.
All published Flash files have the .SWF file extension. Source Flash files, that are used to create the .SWF files within the Adobe Flash Professional authoring environment, have the .FLA file extension. The player itself is not able to play .FLA files; they first have to be converted and published into the .SWF file format.