Shopping on line can be easy, simple and save you lots of money. It can also take a lot of your time, frustrate you, and result in unwanted purchases. Now the same can be said for regular high street shopping, but with the vast opportunity presented by the Internet it will pay you to spend a few minutes reading this and understanding how to better optimize your Macromedia Flash shopping experience:

1. Compare - without doubt the biggest advantage that the Macromedia Flash offers shoppers today is the ability to compare thousands of Macromedia Flash at a time. This is a great thing, but not necessarily all the time! Too much can be daunting at times so take advantage of the great comparison sites and where possible let them do the hard work for you.

2. Research - if it has been said it will be on the internet. Ignorance is no longer a justifiable reason for buying the wrong thing. Take the time to research in detail everything that you could possible want to know about

3. Testimonials - don't know anybody that has bought a Macromedia Flash? Wrong! If the Macromedia Flash is good the internet will let you know. Use the Internet as a friend and get testimonials before you buy.

4. Questions - Got a question about Macromedia Flash then search the Forums, FAQ's, Blogs etc. Don't be afraid to ask .....

5. Reputation - Never heard of the company selling Macromedia Flash? Don't worry, no reason why you should know every company in the world, but you know someone that does! Use the internet to find out what people are saying about Macromedia Flash and build up a picture of their reputation for sales, returns, customer service, delivery etc.

6. Returns - still worried that even after all of the above your Macromedia Flash wont be what you want? Check out the returns policy. There is so much competition now that someone, somewhere is bound to offer the terms that you are comfortable with.

7. Feedback - happy with your Macromedia Flash then let people know, after all you are depending on others people input in your buying decision, so why not give a little back.

8. Security - check for the yellow padlock on the Macromedia Flash site before you buy, and the s after http:/ /i.e. https:// = a secure site

9. Contact - got a question about Macromedia Flash, or want to leave a comment then check out the sites contact page. Reputable companies have them and respond.

10. Payment - ready to pay for your Macromedia Flash, then use your credit card or PayPal! Be aware of companies that don't accept them, there may be genuine reasons but given the huge amount of choice you have when buying online there is no reason at all not to buy via credit card or PayPal.



{{Infobox Software| name = Adobe Flash| logo = | caption = Adobe Flash CS3 under Mac OS X.| screenshot = | developer = Adobe Systems [2007 (no native [Windows XP Professional x64 Edition support), Mac OS X
Player support only: GNU/Linux (Intel, x86) and Solaris (operating system) (Intel, SPARC)] EULA, and to the Adobe Flash Professional multimedia authoring program. Adobe Flash Professional is used to create content for the [Adobe Engagement Platform (such as web applications, games and movies, and content for mobile phones and other embedded devices). The Flash Player, developed and distributed by Adobe Systems (which acquired Macromedia in a merger that was finalized in December 2005), is a client application available in most common web browsers. It features support for vector graphics and raster graphics, a scripting language called ActionScript and bi-directional streaming of audio and video. There are also versions of the Flash Player for mobile phones and other non-PC devices.

Strictly speaking, Adobe Flash Professional is an integrated development environment (IDE) while Flash Player is a virtual machine used to run, or parse, the Flash files. But in contemporary colloquial terms "Flash" can refer to the authoring environment, the player, or the application files.

Since its introduction in 1996, Flash technology has become a popular method for adding animation and interactivity to web pages; several software products, systems, and information appliances are able to create or display Flash. Flash is commonly used to create animation, advertisements, various web-page components, to integrate video into web pages, and more recently, to develop rich Internet applications.

The Flash files, traditionally called "Flash movies" or "Flash games", have a .SWF file extension and may be an object of a web page, strictly "played" in a standalone Flash Player, or incorporated into a Projector, a self-executing Flash movie with the .exe extension in Windows. Flash Video files have a .flv file extension and are utilized from within .SWF files.

History Flash grew out of a chain of thought that started in the 1980s with some ideas Jonathan Gay had at school, then at college and later while working for Silicon Beach Software and its successors. In January 1993, Charles H Jackson IV, Jonathan Gay, and Michelle Welsh started a small software company called FutureWave Software and created their first product, SmartSketch. A drawing application, SmartSketch was designed to make creating computer graphics as simple as drawing on paper. Although SmartSketch was an innovative drawing application, it didn't gain enough of a foothold in its market. As the Internet began to thrive, FutureWave began to realize the potential for a vector-based web animation tool that might easily challenge Macromedia often slow-to-download Adobe Shockwave technology. In 1995, FutureWave modified SmartSketch by adding frame-by-frame animation features and re-released it as FutureSplash Animator on Macintosh and PC. By that time, the company had added a second programmer Robert Tatsumi, artist Adam Grofcsik, and PR specialist Ralph Mittman. The product was offered to Adobe and used by Microsoft in its early (MSN) work with the Internet. In December 1996, Macromedia acquired the vector-based animation software and later released it as Flash 1.0.

History (authoring tool)

Future developments Adobe Labs (previously Macromedia Labs) is a source for early looks at emerging products and technologies from Adobe-Macromedia, including downloads of the latest software and plugins. Flash 9, Macromedia Flex 2, and ActionScript 3.0 are discussed.

The important new development in Flash is its increasing use in providing the presentation layer in handheld devices. Adobe is aggressively courting cell phone and PDA vendors, and partnering to deploy Adobe Flash Lite as the user interface.

A project currently in development at Adobe Labs is the Adobe AIR which is a cross-OS runtime that allows developers to reuse their existing web development skills (Flash, Flex, HTML, Ajax) to build and deploy desktop Rich Internet Applications (RIAs).

The next version of Flash will have two additional components designed for large scale implementation. Adobe is adding in the option to require an ad to be played in full before the main video piece is played. This would be most useful for large scale video sites. Also, Adobe has announced plans to add DRM into the new version of Flash. This way Adobe can give companies the option to link an advertisement with content and make sure that both are played and that they are not changed.

Programming language Initially focused on animation, early versions of Flash content offered few interactivity features and thus had very limited scripting capability.

More recent versions include ActionScript, an implementation of the ECMAScript standard which therefore has the same syntax as JavaScript, but in a different programming framework with a different associated set of class libraries. ActionScript is used to create almost all of the interactivity (buttons, text entry fields, pick lists) seen in many Flash applications.

New versions of the Flash Player and authoring tool have strived to improve on scripting capabilities. Flash MX 2004 introduced ActionScript 2.0, a scripting programming language more suited to the development of Flash applications. It is often possible to save a lot of time by scripting something rather than animating it, which usually also retains a higher level of editability.

Of late, the Flash libraries are being used with the XML capabilities of the browser to render rich content in the browser. Since Flash provides more comprehensive support for vector graphics than the browser and because it provides a scripting language geared towards interactive animations, it is being considered a viable addition to the capabilities of a browser. This technology, which is currently in its nascent stage, is known as Asynchronous Flash and XML, much like Ajax (programming), but with possibly greater potential.

Content protection Many times, Flash authors will decide that while they desire the advantages that Flash affords them in the areas of animation and interactivity, they do not wish to expose their images and/or code to the world. However, once an .swf file is saved locally, it may then quite easily be decompilation into its source code and assets. Some decompilers are capable of nearly full reconstruction of the original source file, down to the actual code that was used during creation.

In opposition to the decompilers, SWF obfuscated code have been introduced to provide a modicum of security, some produced by decompiler authors themselves. The higher-quality obfuscators use traps for the decompilers, making some fail, but none have definitively been shown to protect all content.

Competition Format and plug-in Compared to other plug-ins such as Java virtual machine, Adobe Acrobat, QuickTime or Windows Media Player, the Flash Player has a small install size, quick download time, and fast initialization time. However, care must be taken to detect and embed the Flash Player in (X)HTML in a W3C compliant way. A simple and widely used workaround is provided below:<object data="movie.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="500" height="500"> <param name="movie" value="movie.swf"/> </object>

More Information on how to detect and embed Flash Objects in a W3C compliant way is provided in the xSWF description.

The use of vector graphics combined with program code allows Flash files to be smaller, or streams to use less bandwidth, than the corresponding bitmaps or video clips. For content in a single format (such as just text, video or audio) other alternatives may provide better performance and consume less central processing unit power than the corresponding Flash movie, for example when using transparency or making large screen updates such as photographic or text fades.

In addition to a vector-rendering engine, the Flash Player includes a virtual machine called the ActionScript Virtual Machine (AVM) for scripting interactivity at run-time, support for video, MP3-based audio, and bitmap graphics. As of Flash Player 8, it offers two video codecs: On2 Technologies VP6 and sorenson codec, and run-time support for JPEG, Progressive JPEG, PNG, and Graphics Interchange Format. In the next version, Flash is slated to use a Just-in-time compilation compiler for the ActionScript engine.

Flash as a format has become very widespread on the desktop market. According to a NPD Group study, 98% of US Web users have the Flash Player installed, with 45%–56% (depending on region) having the latest version. Numbers vary depending on the detection scheme and research demographics.

Flash players exist for a wide variety of different systems and devices. Flash content can run consistently on Microsoft Windows, Mac OS, and Linux (Macromedia has created or licensed players for the following operating systems: Windows, Mac OS 9/Mac OS X, Solaris (operating system), HP-UX, Pocket PC, OS/2, QNX, Symbian, Palm OS, BeOS, and IRIX). See also Macromedia Flash Lite for Flash compatibility on other devices.

Adobe offers the specifications of the Flash file format (excluding specifications of related formats such as AMF) to developers who agree to a license agreement that permits them to use the specifications only to develop programs that can export to the Flash file format. The license forbids the use of the specifications to create programs that can be used for playback of Flash files.

Free software alternatives There is, as of late 2007, no complete free software replacement which offers all the functionality of the latest version of Adobe Flash. Gnash, based on GameSWF, is a Flash player replacement that is under development and has the support of the Free Software Foundation. Gnash supports Flash 7 and below, but not files that require version 8 or 9 features. Open Source projects like Ajax Animator, UIRA, and Openswif also aim to create a flash development environment.

A full end-to-end implementation of the World Wide Web Consortium Scalable Vector Graphics and Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language specifications would offer close competition for most of the features of Flash in an open, standard way. Adobe used to develop and distribute the 'Adobe SVG Viewer' client plug-in for MS Internet Explorer, but has recently announced its discontinuation. It has been noted by industry commentators that this is probably no coincidence at a time when Adobe has moved from competing with Macromedia's Flash, to owning the technology itself. Meanwhile, Opera (Internet suite) has supported SVG since version 8, and Firefox's built-in support for SVG continues to grow.

libavg is a high-performance open source alternative for media-rich applications that aren't browser-based.

Third-party Playback Since Flash files do not depend on an open standard such as Scalable Vector Graphics, this reduces the incentive for non-commercial software to support the format, although there are SWF#External Links third party tools which use and generate the SWF file format. IrfanView is capable of playing SWF files. There is a large and vibrant open source community. Flash Player cannot ship as part of a pure open source, or completely free software operating system, as its distribution is bound to the Macromedia Licensing Program and subject to approval.

Authoring In October 1998, Macromedia disclosed the Flash Version 3 Specification to the world on its website. It did this in response to many new and often semi-open formats competing with SWF, such as Xara's Xara Flare and Sharp's Extended Vector Animation formats. Several developers quickly created a C (programming language) C library for producing SWF. February 1999 saw the launch of MorphInk 99, the first third party program to create SWF files. Macromedia also hired Middlesoft to create a freely available development kit for the SWF file format versions 3 to 5.

Today, several open and free libraries and tool sets exist to generate and manipulate SWF files on many platforms. These include the Ming library, SWFTools, and the combination of swfmill and MTASC.

Macromedia has made the Flash Files specifications for versions 6 and later available only under a non-disclosure agreement, but it is widely available from various sites.

Many shareware developers produced Flash creation tools and sold them for under US$50 between 2000 and 2002. In 2003 competition and the emergence of free Flash creation tools, most notably OpenOffice.org Impress, had driven many third-party Flash-creation tool-makers out of the market, allowing the remaining developers to raise their prices, although many of the products still cost less than US$100 and support ActionScript. As for open source tools, KToon can edit vectors and generate SWF, but its interface is very different from Macromedia's. Another, more recent example of a Flash creation tool is SWiSH Max made by an ex-employee of Macromedia. ToonBoom Technologies also sells traditional animation tool, based on Flash - Toon-Army. Anime Studio is a 2D animation software specialised for character animation which creates SWF files.

Adobe wrote a software package called Adobe LiveMotion, designed to create interactive animation content and export it to a variety of formats, including SWF. LiveMotion went through two major releases, but failed to gain any notable user base. Cartoon Man X Studios is one of the studios that uses this software.

In February 2003, Macromedia purchased Presedia, which had developed a Flash authoring tool that automatically converted Microsoft PowerPoint Files into Flash. Macromedia subsequently released the new product as Breeze, which included many new enhancements. Since that time, Macromedia has seen competing PowerPoint-to-Flash authoring tools from PointeCast (not to be confused with PointCast) and PresentationPro among others. In addition, (as of version 2) Apple Inc.'s Keynote (software) presentation software also allows users to create interactive presentations and export to SWF.

In April of 2006, the Macromedia Flash SWF file format specification was released with details on the then newest version format (Flash 8). Although still lacking specific information on the incorporated video compression formats (On2, Sorenson Spark, etc.), this new documentation covers all the new features offered in Flash v8 including new ActionScript commands, expressive filter controls, and so on. The file format specification document is typically obtainable by subscribing to Macromedia's membership system and license restrictions (which include a prohibition against using these specifications to develop a free software alternative).

Criticisms ] Usage Due to the increase in the use of Flash in aggressive—and even intrusive—online advertising, tools have emerged that restrict Flash content in some or all websites by temporarily or permanently turning Flash Player off depending on user requirements. Examples of such tools are Flashblock and Adblock for the Mozilla Firefox browser, Internet Explorer browser, and the Safari (web browser) browser, all of which are commonly used in conjunction with each other to allow users to control what Flash content they see.

Many websites rely on Flash being available by default on a user's web browser and will not check to see if it is available. If Flash is not installed, users may be unable to access some Flash-dependent websites or site features. These sites sometimes depend on a fast internet connection, especially a highly complex website or one with music. While it is possible to see Flash-based sites with a slower form of internet, such as dial-up, or a slow form of DSL, it may be frustrating for the user. Blocking tools generally do alert the end user to the fact that Flash content is present on the site, allowing the user to view it if they wish.

Flash stores its content in a binary file that is not easily accessible by search engine crawlers. However, this problem can be alleviated with coding techniques to detect if a client is capable of viewing the flash content and showing standard markup code if it is not.

Using Flash to restrict access to content Many content producers use Flash as a way to limit user's access to the media displayed in their browsers, and/or gain clicks by forcing extra steps to display. For example, in Windows, Shockwave/Flash (.swf) files cannot be right-clicked and saved. Famously, YouTube furnishes all video in flash video format (.flv), requiring users to turn to third-party solutions to store the content locally. The usage is now spreading to photo sharing websites such as Webshots. A Flash overlay exists over the initial photo displayed, requiring a second click to retrieve the photo, slowing the experience considerably. However, if Flash is not installed, the image displays normally.

Local Shared Objects Flash Players from version 6 can store and retrieve persistent data without offering any visible signs to the user—in a manner similar to that of cookies. It is possible to clear the temporary files that Flash stores on your computer either through the Flash website, or by clearing the files manually. The default storage location for LSOs is operating-system dependent. For Windows XP, the location is within each user's Application Data directory, under Macromedia\Flash Player\#SharedObjects. For Mac OS X the location is in each users Library directory under Preferences/Macromedia/Flash Player/#SharedObjects. On Linux the location is in each users directory: ~/.macromedia/Flash_Player/#SharedObjects.

Application flaws Specially crafted files have been shown to cause Flash applications to malfunction, by allowing the Execution (computers) of malevolent code. The Flash Player has a long history of security flaws that expose computers to remote attacks. However, exploitation of these flaws has remained at the proof-of-concept stage and has not escalated into a real-world problem.

In addition to entries in the Open Source Vulnerability Database, security advisories published in August 2002, December 2002, and November 2005 highlight three examples of reports about various Flash Player versions that allowed remote code execution.

The Flash Player often uses a large portion of even a modern computer's processing power (CPU usage) when playing Flash objects which have not been optimized. Flash objects that cause high CPU usage are common.

Accessibility issues The US Justice Department has stated in regard to the Americans with Disabilites Act:

"Covered entities under the ADA are required to provide effective communication, regardless of whether they generally communicate through print media, audio media, or computerized media such as the Internet. Covered entities that use the Internet for communications regarding their programs, goods, or services must be prepared to offer those communications through accessible means as well."

Currently, businesses are able to sidestep this mandate to a great degree because the increased cost and complexity associated with providing content to sight-challenged viewers. However, the same argument can be made about those with ADHD, since changes to a website to better accommodate users under ADA 504 might further break the same website for other users under ADA 504.

Although long since fixed with accessibility functions since Flash Player 6, Internet users who are visually-impaired, and who may rely on a screen reader, braille display, or using larger text sizes and/or high-contrast color schemes may find sites that make extensive use of Flash difficult or impossible to use.

Flash Player on various platforms The Adobe Flash Player is mainly optimized for the Windows 32 bit platform. 32 bit editions of version 9 are also available for Mac OS X, Linux, and Solaris (operating system). Adobe has been criticized for neglecting to optimize its products on non-Microsoft platforms. This has led to poor web surfing performance on Macintosh and Linux computers with Flash prior to version 9, since many websites use Flash animations for menus and advertisements. Flash Player 7 for Linux was very Central processing unit hungry in fullscreen mode, resulting in low frame rates.

Adobe has rewritten the Windows and OS/2 bitmap drawing routines in Flash Player 8 for Mac, using OpenGL planes via Quartz Compositor to draw the surfaces. The new drawing code is reported to be actually faster than its Windows counterpart, where JPEG, Tagged Image File Format or other bitmap images are composited into the animation.

The Linux version of the Flash Player requires the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) to output sound. ALSA was introduced in Linux 2.5 and can only be used with recent sound hardware. Users of the legacy Open Sound System must either compile and install the abstraction layer flashsupport provided by Adobe, run the Windows Flash Player in a Windows browser through WINE, or switch to ALSA, which may involve recompiling or upgrading the kernel and/or installing additional drivers. However, it is questionable how many of the Linux users would be able to identify this problem.On Flash Player 7 for Linux, the sound could lag about a second behind the picture; this issue was resolved in Flash Player 9. Flash Player 8 was never released for Linux, Adobe stated that they would skip that version and instead focus on preparing Flash Player 9. This decision led to disappointment in the Linux community, with some people feeling that Adobe had abandoned the Linux market. Flash Player 9 for Linux was released in January 2007, providing platform parity once again.On Linux, it is generally not possible to scroll a web page while the mouse cursor is held over a flash animation (On some distributions, it is possible by using the arrow keys after a mouse click on the page outside the flash). Long news sites may be a pain to scroll through, as they often contain flash animations spread out all over, so that one must slalom the cursor around the flash content while scrolling.

Adobe has yet (as of April 2007) to release a Flash Player for the x86-64 architecture on any operating system. There is to date no Linux Flash Player for non-x86 compatible processors (e.g. x86-64 native, PowerPC, ARM architecture, etc.). Adobe employees have said the Flash implementation is very 32-bit specific and porting to 64-bit systems would require a lot of effort. Adobe is currently working on a 64-bit version. Adobe have not yet released any of their development software for any UNIX-like operating system except Mac OS X.

Search engine indexability The problem with the fact that Flash content cannot be indexed properly by search engine "bots" has been corrected, or at least alleviated, with Flash CS3. Users can publish Flash CS3 with meta tags that index individual Flash movie content, such as links, which can be used by search engine bots to properly categorize the information. In addition, with the implementation of XML and other external scripting languages (like PHP) flash can now run websites at greater speeds than their graphic-heavy counterparts (some applications can run on as little as 50 KB; about the size of one image).

Digital Rights Management According to a recent article from BBC News, the latest iteration of Flash allows copyright holders to embed ads within videos, as well as control how those videos are used. With this latest piece of software, companies will be able to quickly remove any video that they feel violates copyright and force advertisements to play prior to the start of the video.

Market share According to a Millward Brown survey, conducted June 2007, Adobe claims Flash reaches 99.3% of desktop Internet users. Independent market share data is not available because the several companies who periodically gather browser usage data (see Usage share of web browsers) do not measure Flash penetration.

Related file formats and extensions {| class="wikitable"!Ext.!Explanation|-| .SWF|.swf files are completed, compiled and published files that cannot be edited with Adobe Flash. However, many '.swf decompilers' do exist. Attempting to import .swf files using Flash allows it to retrieve some assets from the .swf, but not all.|-|.fla|.fla files contain source material for the Flash application. Flash authoring software can edit FLA files and compile them into .swf files.|-|.Action Script|.as files contain ActionScript source code in simple source files. FLA files can also contain Actionscript code directly, but separate external .as files often emerge for structural reasons, or to expose the code to versioning applications. They sometimes use the extension .actionscript]|.flv files are Flash video files, as created by Adobe Flash, ffmpeg, Sorenson Squeeze, or On2 Flix.]|-|.flp|.flp files are XML files used to reference all the document files contained in a Flash Project. Flash Projects allow the user to group multiple, related files together to assist in Flash project organization, compilation and build.|-| .spl|.spl files are FutureSplash documents.|-|.aso|.aso files are cache files used during Flash development, containing compiled ActionScript byte code. An ASO file is recreated when a change in its corresponding class files is detected. Occasionally the Flash IDE does not recognize that a recompile is necessary, and these cache files must be deleted manually. They are located in %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Macromedia\Flash8\en\Configuration\Classes\aso on Win32 / Flash8.|-||.lmv|.lmv files is the equivalent to .fla file. These files are also the source material for the open-source program Liveswif, which can also compile them into .swf files.|}

Video in web pages Flash is increasingly used as a way to display video clips on web pages, a feature available since Flash Player version 7. As a video format, Flash is liked for its ability to be displayed inside browser windows, and not for its relatively limited platform compatibility. While there are other video file types that can be played on more platforms, typically 'out of the box' on the majority of operating systems, their browser plugins are limited in distribution. In contrast, the Adobe Flash Player is a dedicated browser plugin, but also available as standalone player. It is available for many popular platforms, including Windows, Mac OS X and, to some extent, Linux. Flash is used as the basis for many popular video sites, including YouTube and Google Video. One major flaw with multimedia embedded through Flash, however, is the considerable performance penalty placed on playback hardware as compared with a proper multimedia playback system. Many files that drop frames and skip audio when embedded within Flash play without any issues using normal multimedia formats on the same hardware.

Flash Video (.flv files) is a container format, meaning that it is not a video format in itself, but can contain other formats. The video in Flash is encoded in H.263, and starting with Flash player 8, it may alternatively be encoded in VP6. The audio is in MP3. The use of VP6 is common in many companies, because of the large adoption rates of Flash Player 8 and Flash Player 9.

On August 20, 2007, Adobe announced on its blog that with Update 3 of the Flash Player (currently in beta), Flash Video will also support the MPEG-4 international standard. {{cite web] (MPEG-4 Part 10), audio compressed using Advanced Audio Coding (MPEG-4 Part 3), the MP4, M4V, M4A, 3GP and MOV multimedia Container format (digital) (MPEG-4 Part 14), 3GPP Timed Text specification (MPEG-4 Part 17) which is a standardized subtitle format and partial parsing support for the 'ilst' atom which is the ID3 equivalent iTunes uses to store metadata. Adobe also announced that they will be gradually moving away from the proprietary FLV format to the standard MP4 format owing to functional limits with the FLV structure when streaming H.264. The final release of the Flash Player supporting MPEG-4 is expected to be available in Fall 2007. Adobe Press release on MPEG-4 support in Flash Player 9

See also

References External links

{{Infobox Software| name = Adobe Flash| logo = | caption = Adobe Flash CS3 under Mac OS X.| screenshot = | developer = Adobe Systems [2007 (no native [Windows XP Professional x64 Edition support), Mac OS X
Player support only: GNU/Linux (Intel, x86) and Solaris (operating system) (Intel, SPARC)] EULA, and to the Adobe Flash Professional multimedia authoring program. Adobe Flash Professional is used to create content for the [Adobe Engagement Platform (such as web applications, games and movies, and content for mobile phones and other embedded devices). The Flash Player, developed and distributed by Adobe Systems (which acquired Macromedia in a merger that was finalized in December 2005), is a client application available in most common web browsers. It features support for vector graphics and raster graphics, a scripting language called ActionScript and bi-directional streaming of audio and video. There are also versions of the Flash Player for mobile phones and other non-PC devices.

Strictly speaking, Adobe Flash Professional is an integrated development environment (IDE) while Flash Player is a virtual machine used to run, or parse, the Flash files. But in contemporary colloquial terms "Flash" can refer to the authoring environment, the player, or the application files.

Since its introduction in 1996, Flash technology has become a popular method for adding animation and interactivity to web pages; several software products, systems, and information appliances are able to create or display Flash. Flash is commonly used to create animation, advertisements, various web-page components, to integrate video into web pages, and more recently, to develop rich Internet applications.

The Flash files, traditionally called "Flash movies" or "Flash games", have a .SWF file extension and may be an object of a web page, strictly "played" in a standalone Flash Player, or incorporated into a Projector, a self-executing Flash movie with the .exe extension in Windows. Flash Video files have a .flv file extension and are utilized from within .SWF files.

History Flash grew out of a chain of thought that started in the 1980s with some ideas Jonathan Gay had at school, then at college and later while working for Silicon Beach Software and its successors. In January 1993, Charles H Jackson IV, Jonathan Gay, and Michelle Welsh started a small software company called FutureWave Software and created their first product, SmartSketch. A drawing application, SmartSketch was designed to make creating computer graphics as simple as drawing on paper. Although SmartSketch was an innovative drawing application, it didn't gain enough of a foothold in its market. As the Internet began to thrive, FutureWave began to realize the potential for a vector-based web animation tool that might easily challenge Macromedia often slow-to-download Adobe Shockwave technology. In 1995, FutureWave modified SmartSketch by adding frame-by-frame animation features and re-released it as FutureSplash Animator on Macintosh and PC. By that time, the company had added a second programmer Robert Tatsumi, artist Adam Grofcsik, and PR specialist Ralph Mittman. The product was offered to Adobe and used by Microsoft in its early (MSN) work with the Internet. In December 1996, Macromedia acquired the vector-based animation software and later released it as Flash 1.0.

History (authoring tool)

Future developments Adobe Labs (previously Macromedia Labs) is a source for early looks at emerging products and technologies from Adobe-Macromedia, including downloads of the latest software and plugins. Flash 9, Macromedia Flex 2, and ActionScript 3.0 are discussed.

The important new development in Flash is its increasing use in providing the presentation layer in handheld devices. Adobe is aggressively courting cell phone and PDA vendors, and partnering to deploy Adobe Flash Lite as the user interface.

A project currently in development at Adobe Labs is the Adobe AIR which is a cross-OS runtime that allows developers to reuse their existing web development skills (Flash, Flex, HTML, Ajax) to build and deploy desktop Rich Internet Applications (RIAs).

The next version of Flash will have two additional components designed for large scale implementation. Adobe is adding in the option to require an ad to be played in full before the main video piece is played. This would be most useful for large scale video sites. Also, Adobe has announced plans to add DRM into the new version of Flash. This way Adobe can give companies the option to link an advertisement with content and make sure that both are played and that they are not changed.

Programming language Initially focused on animation, early versions of Flash content offered few interactivity features and thus had very limited scripting capability.

More recent versions include ActionScript, an implementation of the ECMAScript standard which therefore has the same syntax as JavaScript, but in a different programming framework with a different associated set of class libraries. ActionScript is used to create almost all of the interactivity (buttons, text entry fields, pick lists) seen in many Flash applications.

New versions of the Flash Player and authoring tool have strived to improve on scripting capabilities. Flash MX 2004 introduced ActionScript 2.0, a scripting programming language more suited to the development of Flash applications. It is often possible to save a lot of time by scripting something rather than animating it, which usually also retains a higher level of editability.

Of late, the Flash libraries are being used with the XML capabilities of the browser to render rich content in the browser. Since Flash provides more comprehensive support for vector graphics than the browser and because it provides a scripting language geared towards interactive animations, it is being considered a viable addition to the capabilities of a browser. This technology, which is currently in its nascent stage, is known as Asynchronous Flash and XML, much like Ajax (programming), but with possibly greater potential.

Content protection Many times, Flash authors will decide that while they desire the advantages that Flash affords them in the areas of animation and interactivity, they do not wish to expose their images and/or code to the world. However, once an .swf file is saved locally, it may then quite easily be decompilation into its source code and assets. Some decompilers are capable of nearly full reconstruction of the original source file, down to the actual code that was used during creation.

In opposition to the decompilers, SWF obfuscated code have been introduced to provide a modicum of security, some produced by decompiler authors themselves. The higher-quality obfuscators use traps for the decompilers, making some fail, but none have definitively been shown to protect all content.

Competition Format and plug-in Compared to other plug-ins such as Java virtual machine, Adobe Acrobat, QuickTime or Windows Media Player, the Flash Player has a small install size, quick download time, and fast initialization time. However, care must be taken to detect and embed the Flash Player in (X)HTML in a W3C compliant way. A simple and widely used workaround is provided below:<object data="movie.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="500" height="500"> <param name="movie" value="movie.swf"/> </object>

More Information on how to detect and embed Flash Objects in a W3C compliant way is provided in the xSWF description.

The use of vector graphics combined with program code allows Flash files to be smaller, or streams to use less bandwidth, than the corresponding bitmaps or video clips. For content in a single format (such as just text, video or audio) other alternatives may provide better performance and consume less central processing unit power than the corresponding Flash movie, for example when using transparency or making large screen updates such as photographic or text fades.

In addition to a vector-rendering engine, the Flash Player includes a virtual machine called the ActionScript Virtual Machine (AVM) for scripting interactivity at run-time, support for video, MP3-based audio, and bitmap graphics. As of Flash Player 8, it offers two video codecs: On2 Technologies VP6 and sorenson codec, and run-time support for JPEG, Progressive JPEG, PNG, and Graphics Interchange Format. In the next version, Flash is slated to use a Just-in-time compilation compiler for the ActionScript engine.

Flash as a format has become very widespread on the desktop market. According to a NPD Group study, 98% of US Web users have the Flash Player installed, with 45%–56% (depending on region) having the latest version. Numbers vary depending on the detection scheme and research demographics.

Flash players exist for a wide variety of different systems and devices. Flash content can run consistently on Microsoft Windows, Mac OS, and Linux (Macromedia has created or licensed players for the following operating systems: Windows, Mac OS 9/Mac OS X, Solaris (operating system), HP-UX, Pocket PC, OS/2, QNX, Symbian, Palm OS, BeOS, and IRIX). See also Macromedia Flash Lite for Flash compatibility on other devices.

Adobe offers the specifications of the Flash file format (excluding specifications of related formats such as AMF) to developers who agree to a license agreement that permits them to use the specifications only to develop programs that can export to the Flash file format. The license forbids the use of the specifications to create programs that can be used for playback of Flash files.

Free software alternatives There is, as of late 2007, no complete free software replacement which offers all the functionality of the latest version of Adobe Flash. Gnash, based on GameSWF, is a Flash player replacement that is under development and has the support of the Free Software Foundation. Gnash supports Flash 7 and below, but not files that require version 8 or 9 features. Open Source projects like Ajax Animator, UIRA, and Openswif also aim to create a flash development environment.

A full end-to-end implementation of the World Wide Web Consortium Scalable Vector Graphics and Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language specifications would offer close competition for most of the features of Flash in an open, standard way. Adobe used to develop and distribute the 'Adobe SVG Viewer' client plug-in for MS Internet Explorer, but has recently announced its discontinuation. It has been noted by industry commentators that this is probably no coincidence at a time when Adobe has moved from competing with Macromedia's Flash, to owning the technology itself. Meanwhile, Opera (Internet suite) has supported SVG since version 8, and Firefox's built-in support for SVG continues to grow.

libavg is a high-performance open source alternative for media-rich applications that aren't browser-based.

Third-party Playback Since Flash files do not depend on an open standard such as Scalable Vector Graphics, this reduces the incentive for non-commercial software to support the format, although there are SWF#External Links third party tools which use and generate the SWF file format. IrfanView is capable of playing SWF files. There is a large and vibrant open source community. Flash Player cannot ship as part of a pure open source, or completely free software operating system, as its distribution is bound to the Macromedia Licensing Program and subject to approval.

Authoring In October 1998, Macromedia disclosed the Flash Version 3 Specification to the world on its website. It did this in response to many new and often semi-open formats competing with SWF, such as Xara's Xara Flare and Sharp's Extended Vector Animation formats. Several developers quickly created a C (programming language) C library for producing SWF. February 1999 saw the launch of MorphInk 99, the first third party program to create SWF files. Macromedia also hired Middlesoft to create a freely available development kit for the SWF file format versions 3 to 5.

Today, several open and free libraries and tool sets exist to generate and manipulate SWF files on many platforms. These include the Ming library, SWFTools, and the combination of swfmill and MTASC.

Macromedia has made the Flash Files specifications for versions 6 and later available only under a non-disclosure agreement, but it is widely available from various sites.

Many shareware developers produced Flash creation tools and sold them for under US$50 between 2000 and 2002. In 2003 competition and the emergence of free Flash creation tools, most notably OpenOffice.org Impress, had driven many third-party Flash-creation tool-makers out of the market, allowing the remaining developers to raise their prices, although many of the products still cost less than US$100 and support ActionScript. As for open source tools, KToon can edit vectors and generate SWF, but its interface is very different from Macromedia's. Another, more recent example of a Flash creation tool is SWiSH Max made by an ex-employee of Macromedia. ToonBoom Technologies also sells traditional animation tool, based on Flash - Toon-Army. Anime Studio is a 2D animation software specialised for character animation which creates SWF files.

Adobe wrote a software package called Adobe LiveMotion, designed to create interactive animation content and export it to a variety of formats, including SWF. LiveMotion went through two major releases, but failed to gain any notable user base. Cartoon Man X Studios is one of the studios that uses this software.

In February 2003, Macromedia purchased Presedia, which had developed a Flash authoring tool that automatically converted Microsoft PowerPoint Files into Flash. Macromedia subsequently released the new product as Breeze, which included many new enhancements. Since that time, Macromedia has seen competing PowerPoint-to-Flash authoring tools from PointeCast (not to be confused with PointCast) and PresentationPro among others. In addition, (as of version 2) Apple Inc.'s Keynote (software) presentation software also allows users to create interactive presentations and export to SWF.

In April of 2006, the Macromedia Flash SWF file format specification was released with details on the then newest version format (Flash 8). Although still lacking specific information on the incorporated video compression formats (On2, Sorenson Spark, etc.), this new documentation covers all the new features offered in Flash v8 including new ActionScript commands, expressive filter controls, and so on. The file format specification document is typically obtainable by subscribing to Macromedia's membership system and license restrictions (which include a prohibition against using these specifications to develop a free software alternative).

Criticisms ] Usage Due to the increase in the use of Flash in aggressive—and even intrusive—online advertising, tools have emerged that restrict Flash content in some or all websites by temporarily or permanently turning Flash Player off depending on user requirements. Examples of such tools are Flashblock and Adblock for the Mozilla Firefox browser, Internet Explorer browser, and the Safari (web browser) browser, all of which are commonly used in conjunction with each other to allow users to control what Flash content they see.

Many websites rely on Flash being available by default on a user's web browser and will not check to see if it is available. If Flash is not installed, users may be unable to access some Flash-dependent websites or site features. These sites sometimes depend on a fast internet connection, especially a highly complex website or one with music. While it is possible to see Flash-based sites with a slower form of internet, such as dial-up, or a slow form of DSL, it may be frustrating for the user. Blocking tools generally do alert the end user to the fact that Flash content is present on the site, allowing the user to view it if they wish.

Flash stores its content in a binary file that is not easily accessible by search engine crawlers. However, this problem can be alleviated with coding techniques to detect if a client is capable of viewing the flash content and showing standard markup code if it is not.

Using Flash to restrict access to content Many content producers use Flash as a way to limit user's access to the media displayed in their browsers, and/or gain clicks by forcing extra steps to display. For example, in Windows, Shockwave/Flash (.swf) files cannot be right-clicked and saved. Famously, YouTube furnishes all video in flash video format (.flv), requiring users to turn to third-party solutions to store the content locally. The usage is now spreading to photo sharing websites such as Webshots. A Flash overlay exists over the initial photo displayed, requiring a second click to retrieve the photo, slowing the experience considerably. However, if Flash is not installed, the image displays normally.

Local Shared Objects Flash Players from version 6 can store and retrieve persistent data without offering any visible signs to the user—in a manner similar to that of cookies. It is possible to clear the temporary files that Flash stores on your computer either through the Flash website, or by clearing the files manually. The default storage location for LSOs is operating-system dependent. For Windows XP, the location is within each user's Application Data directory, under Macromedia\Flash Player\#SharedObjects. For Mac OS X the location is in each users Library directory under Preferences/Macromedia/Flash Player/#SharedObjects. On Linux the location is in each users directory: ~/.macromedia/Flash_Player/#SharedObjects.

Application flaws Specially crafted files have been shown to cause Flash applications to malfunction, by allowing the Execution (computers) of malevolent code. The Flash Player has a long history of security flaws that expose computers to remote attacks. However, exploitation of these flaws has remained at the proof-of-concept stage and has not escalated into a real-world problem.

In addition to entries in the Open Source Vulnerability Database, security advisories published in August 2002, December 2002, and November 2005 highlight three examples of reports about various Flash Player versions that allowed remote code execution.

The Flash Player often uses a large portion of even a modern computer's processing power (CPU usage) when playing Flash objects which have not been optimized. Flash objects that cause high CPU usage are common.

Accessibility issues The US Justice Department has stated in regard to the Americans with Disabilites Act:

"Covered entities under the ADA are required to provide effective communication, regardless of whether they generally communicate through print media, audio media, or computerized media such as the Internet. Covered entities that use the Internet for communications regarding their programs, goods, or services must be prepared to offer those communications through accessible means as well."

Currently, businesses are able to sidestep this mandate to a great degree because the increased cost and complexity associated with providing content to sight-challenged viewers. However, the same argument can be made about those with ADHD, since changes to a website to better accommodate users under ADA 504 might further break the same website for other users under ADA 504.

Although long since fixed with accessibility functions since Flash Player 6, Internet users who are visually-impaired, and who may rely on a screen reader, braille display, or using larger text sizes and/or high-contrast color schemes may find sites that make extensive use of Flash difficult or impossible to use.

Flash Player on various platforms The Adobe Flash Player is mainly optimized for the Windows 32 bit platform. 32 bit editions of version 9 are also available for Mac OS X, Linux, and Solaris (operating system). Adobe has been criticized for neglecting to optimize its products on non-Microsoft platforms. This has led to poor web surfing performance on Macintosh and Linux computers with Flash prior to version 9, since many websites use Flash animations for menus and advertisements. Flash Player 7 for Linux was very Central processing unit hungry in fullscreen mode, resulting in low frame rates.

Adobe has rewritten the Windows and OS/2 bitmap drawing routines in Flash Player 8 for Mac, using OpenGL planes via Quartz Compositor to draw the surfaces. The new drawing code is reported to be actually faster than its Windows counterpart, where JPEG, Tagged Image File Format or other bitmap images are composited into the animation.

The Linux version of the Flash Player requires the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) to output sound. ALSA was introduced in Linux 2.5 and can only be used with recent sound hardware. Users of the legacy Open Sound System must either compile and install the abstraction layer flashsupport provided by Adobe, run the Windows Flash Player in a Windows browser through WINE, or switch to ALSA, which may involve recompiling or upgrading the kernel and/or installing additional drivers. However, it is questionable how many of the Linux users would be able to identify this problem.On Flash Player 7 for Linux, the sound could lag about a second behind the picture; this issue was resolved in Flash Player 9. Flash Player 8 was never released for Linux, Adobe stated that they would skip that version and instead focus on preparing Flash Player 9. This decision led to disappointment in the Linux community, with some people feeling that Adobe had abandoned the Linux market. Flash Player 9 for Linux was released in January 2007, providing platform parity once again.On Linux, it is generally not possible to scroll a web page while the mouse cursor is held over a flash animation (On some distributions, it is possible by using the arrow keys after a mouse click on the page outside the flash). Long news sites may be a pain to scroll through, as they often contain flash animations spread out all over, so that one must slalom the cursor around the flash content while scrolling.

Adobe has yet (as of April 2007) to release a Flash Player for the x86-64 architecture on any operating system. There is to date no Linux Flash Player for non-x86 compatible processors (e.g. x86-64 native, PowerPC, ARM architecture, etc.). Adobe employees have said the Flash implementation is very 32-bit specific and porting to 64-bit systems would require a lot of effort. Adobe is currently working on a 64-bit version. Adobe have not yet released any of their development software for any UNIX-like operating system except Mac OS X.

Search engine indexability The problem with the fact that Flash content cannot be indexed properly by search engine "bots" has been corrected, or at least alleviated, with Flash CS3. Users can publish Flash CS3 with meta tags that index individual Flash movie content, such as links, which can be used by search engine bots to properly categorize the information. In addition, with the implementation of XML and other external scripting languages (like PHP) flash can now run websites at greater speeds than their graphic-heavy counterparts (some applications can run on as little as 50 KB; about the size of one image).

Digital Rights Management According to a recent article from BBC News, the latest iteration of Flash allows copyright holders to embed ads within videos, as well as control how those videos are used. With this latest piece of software, companies will be able to quickly remove any video that they feel violates copyright and force advertisements to play prior to the start of the video.

Market share According to a Millward Brown survey, conducted June 2007, Adobe claims Flash reaches 99.3% of desktop Internet users. Independent market share data is not available because the several companies who periodically gather browser usage data (see Usage share of web browsers) do not measure Flash penetration.

Related file formats and extensions {| class="wikitable"!Ext.!Explanation|-| .SWF|.swf files are completed, compiled and published files that cannot be edited with Adobe Flash. However, many '.swf decompilers' do exist. Attempting to import .swf files using Flash allows it to retrieve some assets from the .swf, but not all.|-|.fla|.fla files contain source material for the Flash application. Flash authoring software can edit FLA files and compile them into .swf files.|-|.Action Script|.as files contain ActionScript source code in simple source files. FLA files can also contain Actionscript code directly, but separate external .as files often emerge for structural reasons, or to expose the code to versioning applications. They sometimes use the extension .actionscript]|.flv files are Flash video files, as created by Adobe Flash, ffmpeg, Sorenson Squeeze, or On2 Flix.]|-|.flp|.flp files are XML files used to reference all the document files contained in a Flash Project. Flash Projects allow the user to group multiple, related files together to assist in Flash project organization, compilation and build.|-| .spl|.spl files are FutureSplash documents.|-|.aso|.aso files are cache files used during Flash development, containing compiled ActionScript byte code. An ASO file is recreated when a change in its corresponding class files is detected. Occasionally the Flash IDE does not recognize that a recompile is necessary, and these cache files must be deleted manually. They are located in %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Macromedia\Flash8\en\Configuration\Classes\aso on Win32 / Flash8.|-||.lmv|.lmv files is the equivalent to .fla file. These files are also the source material for the open-source program Liveswif, which can also compile them into .swf files.|}

Video in web pages Flash is increasingly used as a way to display video clips on web pages, a feature available since Flash Player version 7. As a video format, Flash is liked for its ability to be displayed inside browser windows, and not for its relatively limited platform compatibility. While there are other video file types that can be played on more platforms, typically 'out of the box' on the majority of operating systems, their browser plugins are limited in distribution. In contrast, the Adobe Flash Player is a dedicated browser plugin, but also available as standalone player. It is available for many popular platforms, including Windows, Mac OS X and, to some extent, Linux. Flash is used as the basis for many popular video sites, including YouTube and Google Video. One major flaw with multimedia embedded through Flash, however, is the considerable performance penalty placed on playback hardware as compared with a proper multimedia playback system. Many files that drop frames and skip audio when embedded within Flash play without any issues using normal multimedia formats on the same hardware.

Flash Video (.flv files) is a container format, meaning that it is not a video format in itself, but can contain other formats. The video in Flash is encoded in H.263, and starting with Flash player 8, it may alternatively be encoded in VP6. The audio is in MP3. The use of VP6 is common in many companies, because of the large adoption rates of Flash Player 8 and Flash Player 9.

On August 20, 2007, Adobe announced on its blog that with Update 3 of the Flash Player (currently in beta), Flash Video will also support the MPEG-4 international standard. {{cite web] (MPEG-4 Part 10), audio compressed using Advanced Audio Coding (MPEG-4 Part 3), the MP4, M4V, M4A, 3GP and MOV multimedia Container format (digital) (MPEG-4 Part 14), 3GPP Timed Text specification (MPEG-4 Part 17) which is a standardized subtitle format and partial parsing support for the 'ilst' atom which is the ID3 equivalent iTunes uses to store metadata. Adobe also announced that they will be gradually moving away from the proprietary FLV format to the standard MP4 format owing to functional limits with the FLV structure when streaming H.264. The final release of the Flash Player supporting MPEG-4 is expected to be available in Fall 2007. Adobe Press release on MPEG-4 support in Flash Player 9

See also

References External links

Adobe - Flash Player
Platform Browser Player version; Windows: Internet Explorer (and other browsers that support Internet Explorer ActiveX controls and plug-ins) 9.0.124.0

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