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Adobe Flash, or simply '''Flash''', refers to both the Adobe Flash Player , 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 Browser s. It features support for Vector 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 Device s are able to create or display Flash. Flash is commonly used to create animation, Advertisement s, various web-page components, to integrate video into web pages, and more recently, to develop Rich Internet Application s. 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.1 In January 1993, Charlie Jackson , 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's often slow-to-download 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, an artist Adam Grofcsik, and a 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, 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 Flash Lite as the user interface. A project currently in development at Adobe Labs is the Adobe AIR Project {Link without Title} 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.4 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE See Also: ActionScript 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 , 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 Decompiled 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 Obfuscators 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 , 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. 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 CPU 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 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. Flash as a format has become very widespread on the desktop market. According to a NPD study , 98% of US Web users have the Flash Player installed,5 with 45%–56%6 (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 / X , Solaris , 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 2006, 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. 7 Open Source projects like Ajax Animator , UIRA , and Liveswif also aim to create a flash development environment. A full end-to-end implementation of the has supported SVG since version 8,9 and Firefox 's built-in support for SVG continues to grow.10 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 cannot ship as part of a pure Open Source , or completely Free 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 Flare and Sharp's Extended Vector Animation formats. Several developers quickly created a 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 Developers' 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. Toon Boom Technologies also sells traditional animation tool, based on Flash - Toon Boom Studio. 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 ) and PresentationPro among others. In addition, (as of version 2) Apple 's Keynote 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 alternative). CRITICISMS | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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