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.

Product history

• FutureSplash Animator (1995) - initial version of Flash with basic editing tools and a timeline
• Flash 1 (December 1996) - a Macromedia re-branded version of the FutureSplash Animator
• Flash 2 (June 1997) - the object library was added to Flash
• Flash 3 (31 May 1998) - the movieclip element, JavaScript plug-in integration, transparency and an external stand alone player was added to Flash
• Flash 4 (15 June 1999) - internal variables, an input field, advanced Actionscript, and streaming MP3
• Flash 5 (24 August 2000) - Javascript like Actionscript, Smartclips, HTML text formatting added
• Flash MX (15 March 2002) - Unicode, UI Components, XML, compression, streaming video codec
• Flash MX 2004 (10 September 2003) - text alias, Actionscript 2.0, improved streaming video codec, behaviours
• Flash MX 2004 Pro (10 September 2003) - all Flash MX 2004 features plus a form and slide editor, web services integration, Object Oriented Programming in ActionScript 2.0, and Media Playback components, which encapsulate a complete MP3 and/or FLV player in a component that may be placed in a SWF.
• Flash 8 (released on September 13 2005) - Added an external interface allowing the host machine to programmatically control Flash content.
• Flash 8 Pro (released on September 13 2005) - From creating the interactive Web sites, presentations to mobile contents with improved higher-quality of video codec and encoder.