What is FLASH
Adobe Flash (previously called Macromedia Flash) is a multimedia platform originally acquired by Macromedia and currently developed and distributed by Adobe Systems. Since its introduction in 1996, Flash has become a popular method for adding animation and interactivity to web pages; Flash is commonly used to create animation, advertisements, and various web page components, to integrate video into web pages, and more recently, to develop rich Internet applications.
A simple flash document
Flash can manipulate vector and raster graphics and supports bi-directional streaming of audio and video. It contains a scripting language called ActionScript. Several software products, systems, and devices are able to create or display Flash content, including Adobe Flash Player, which is available for most common web browsers, some mobile phones and other electronic devices (using Flash Lite). The Adobe Flash Professional multimedia authoring program 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.Files in the SWF format, traditionally called "ShockWave Flash" movies, "Flash movies" or "Flash games", usually 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 Microsoft Windows). Flash Video (FLV) files have a .flv file extension and are either used from within .swf files or played through a flv aware player, such as VLC, or QuickTime and Windows Media Player with external codecs added.
History Of FLASH
The program Flash was the Brainchild of Jonathan Gay, who developed the idea while in college and extended it while working for Silicon Beach Software and its successors.
In January 1993, Jonathan Gay, Charlie Jackson, and Michelle Welsh started a small software company called FutureWave Software and created their first product, SmartSketch. A drawing application for pen computers running the PenPoint OS, SmartSketch was designed to make creating computer graphics as simple as drawing on paper. When PenPoint failed in the marketplace, SmartSketch was ported to Microsoft Windows and Mac OS. As the Internet began to thrive, however, FutureWave began to realize the potential for a vector-based web animation tool that might easily challenge Macromedia's 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. Tatsumi focused on writing the authoring tool's user interface, while Gay wrote the graphics renderer, curve and shape math code and the browser plug-in. The product was offered to Adobe and used by Microsoft in its early work with the Internet (MSN). In December 1996, Macromedia acquired the vector-based animation software and later released it as Flash, contracting "Future" and "Splash" of the FutureWave name.
Versions of Flash Released in past:
1.) FutureSplash Animator (April 10, 1996): initial version of Flash with basic editing tools and a timeline
2.) Macromedia Flash 1 (November 1996): a Macromedia re-branded version of the FutureSplash Animator
3.) Macromedia Flash 2 (June 1997): Released with Flash Player 2, new features included: the object library
4.) Flash 3 (May 31, 1998): Released with Flash Player 3, new features included: the movieclip element, JavaScript plug-in integration, transparency and an external stand alone player
5.) Macromedia Flash 4 (June 15, 1999): Released with Flash Player 4, new features included: internal variables, an input field, advanced ActionScript, and streaming MP3
6.) Macromedia Flash 5 (August 24, 2000): Released with Flash Player 5, new features included: ActionScript 1.0 (based on ECMAScript, making it very similar to JavaScript in syntax), XML support, Smartclips (the precursor to components in Flash), HTML text formatting added for dynamic text
7.) Flash MX (ver 6) (March 15, 2002): Released with Flash Player 6, new features included: a video codec (Sorenson Spark), Unicode, v1 UI Components, compression, ActionScript vector drawing API
8.) Macromedia Flash MX 2004 (ver 7) (September 9, 2003): Released with Flash Player 7, new features included: Actionscript 2.0 (which enabled an object-oriented programming model for Flash)(although it lacked the Script assist function of other versions, meaning Actionscript could only be typed out manually), behaviors, extensibility layer (JSAPI), alias text support, timeline effects
9.)Macromedia Flash MX Professional 2004 (ver 7) (September 9, 2003): Released with Flash Player 7, new features included all Flash MX 2004 features plus: Screens (forms for non-linear state-based development and slides for organizing content in a linear slide format like PowerPoint), web services integration, video import wizard, Media Playback components (which encapsulate a complete MP3 and/or FLV player in a component that may be placed in an SWF), Data components (DataSet, XMLConnector, WebServicesConnector, XUpdateResolver, etc) and data binding APIs, the Project Panel, v2 UI components, and Transition class libraries.
10.) Macromedia Flash 8:
1.)Macromedia Flash Basic 8 (released on September 13, 2005): A less feature-rich version of the Flash authoring tool targeted at new users who only want to do basic drawing, animation and interactivity. Released with Flash Player 8, this version of the product has limited support for video and advanced graphical and animation effects.
2.) Macromedia Flash Professional 8 (released on September 13, 2005): Released with the Flash Player 8, Flash Professional 8 added features focused on expressiveness, quality, video, and mobile authoring. New features included Filters and blend modes, easing control for animation, enhanced stroke properties (caps and joins), object-based drawing mode, run-time bitmap caching, FlashType advanced anti-aliasing for text, On2 VP6 advanced video codec, support for alpha transparency in video, a stand-alone encoder and advanced video importer, cue point support in FLV files, an advanced video playback component, and an interactive mobile device emulator.
11.) Flash CS3 Professional (as version 9, released on April 16, 2007): Flash CS3 is the first version of Flash released under the Adobe name. CS3 features full support for ActionScript 3.0, allows things to be converted into ActionScript, adds better integration with other Adobe products such as Adobe Photoshop, and also provides better Vector drawing behavior, becoming more like Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Fireworks.
12.) Adobe Flash CS4 Professional (as version 10, released on October 15, 2008): Contains inverse kinematics (bones), basic 3D object manipulation, object-based animation, an enhanced text engine, and further expansions to ActionScript 3.0.
Recent developments
Adobe Labs (previously Macromedia Labs) is a source for news and pre-release versions of emerging products and technologies from Adobe. Most innovations, such as Flash 9, Flex 3, and ActionScript 3.0 have all been discussed and/or trialled on the site. One area Adobe is focusing on (as of February 2009) is the deployment Rich InternetApplications (RIAs). To this end, they released Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR), a cross-platform runtime environment which can be used to build, using Adobe Flash, rich Internet applications that can be deployed as a desktop application. It recently surpassed 100 million installations worldwide. Two additional components designed for large scale implementation have been proposed by Adobe for future releases of Flash. First the option to require an ad to be played in full before the main video piece is played. Secondly, Adobe has announced plans to add Digital Rights Management (DRM) capabilities 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 not be changed. The current status of these two projects is unclear. [dated info] Flash Player for smartphones is expected to be available to handset manufacturers at the end of 2009.
Format and plug-in
Compared to other plug-ins such as Java, Acrobat Reader, 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.
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 Spark, and run-time support for JPEG, Progressive JPEG, PNG, and GIF. In the next version, Flash is slated to use a just-in-time compiler for the ActionScript engine.
Use of computer resources
1.) It is argued that the performance of Adobe Flash Player on different platforms may not be optimal.
2.) Any flash player has to be able to animate on top of the video rendering, which makes hardware accelerated video rendering at least not as straightforward as with a purpose built multimedia player.[41] It is not uncommon for other multimedia players to play fine where Flash Player drops frames and skips audio.
Many popular web browsers now have extensions that prevent immediate Flash playback, but lets the user play it by clicking it first. Firefox has NoScript and Flashblock while a separate extension for Opera called Flashblock is available. One similar extension for Internet Explorer is Foxie, and contains a number of features, one of which is also named Flashblock. K-Meleon has a built-in Flash blocker.
