Macromedia Flash

Macromedia Flash, or simply Flash, refers to both a multimedia authoring program and the Macromedia Flash Player, written and distributed by Macromedia (recently targeted for acquisition by Adobe Systems), that utilizes vector and raster graphics, a native scripting language called ActionScript and bidirectional streaming of video and audio. Strictly speaking, Macromedia Flash is the authoring environment and Flash Player is the virtual machine application used to run the Flash files, but in colloquial language these have become mixed: "Flash" can mean either the authoring environment, the player or the application files.

Macintosh performance

Macromedia has been criticized for neglecting to optimize its products on the Mac OS X platform. This has led to poor web surfing performance on Macintosh computers, since many websites use Flash animations for menus and advertisements. http://www.creativemac.com/2003/06_jun/tutorials/flash_osx.htm http://www.digitalproducer.com/2003/03_mar/editorials/03_17/switcher.htm

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Macromedia does however claim that Flash Player 8, will bring performance very close to its Windows counterpart. http://www.macworld.com/news/2005/08/07/studio/index.php

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