MULTIMEDIA FILE WRK..

1.Introduction,History of flash

2.layers 
   Scenes
Write in detail something about them. What r they,How they work.. etc.

3.layer with an example the wrking process u hv to write.

4. scene  with an example the wrking process u hv to write.

5. sound with an example the wrking process u hv to write.

Flash is a tool for creating interactive and animated Web sites. What is
Flash?
 Flash is a multimedia graphics program specially for use on the Web
 Flash enables you to create interactive "movies" on the Web
 Flash uses vector graphics, which means that the graphics can be scaled to any size without
losing clarity/quality
 Flash does not require programming skills and is easy to learn

The advantages of Flash are:

 Flash loads much faster than animated images

 Flash allows interactivity, animated images do not
 Flash does not require programming skills, java applets do

Steps to follow:

 Open a new flash file (Ctrl+N). 

New Document window will appear
Select General panel and choose Type: Flash Document . Press OK.
 If your timeline window is not open, press (Ctrl+Alt+T).
 Now you can see a single Layer called "Layer1" in your timeline Window.


 Create a Shape Tween on Layer1. Similar to the one in Shape Tween Tutorial.
 Single click on add new layer button. 
 
 A new layer gets added. By default it will be named "Layer 2".
 Create a Motion Tween on Layer 2. Similar to the one in Motion Tween Tutorial. After creating
two layers, your timeline will look something like the one shown below. 


 Now press (Ctrl+Enter) to view your motion tween.

How to Create a New Scene in Flash

By Adrien-Luc Sanders, eHow Member

Create a New Scene in Flash

User-Submitted Article

Flash scenes are like individual Flash movies strung together into a single movie. Scenes allow you
to work with separate timelines without leaving your main document and without concatenating
several different published SWFs; you can even navigate between scenes in your Flash movie by
using ActionScripts that can either automatically move between scenes or move them based on user
action. By default Flash starts off with one scene, but you can always add new ones.
 Difficulty: Easy

Instructions
Things You'll Need:
 A working installation of Flash.

1. 1
To add a new scene, first open the Scenes panel (Window->Scene on the menu, or PC shortcut Shift+F2).

2. 2
You'll see your main scene listed in the window that appears. Look to the bottom right of the window for a
button that looks like a black plus sign, marked "Add Scene."

3. 3
Click the button. A new scene will appear in the scene list below your first scene. By default it will be
sequentially named "Scene #," depending on the number of the scene before it.

4. 4
To rename your new scene, double-click on the scene name and type in a new name.

5. 5
To change the order in which your scenes play, click and drag scenes in the list to place them above or below
each other. Unless you script your timeline to place pauses on timelines, your scenes will automatically play
through in the order in which you arrange them.

Example
Example

Step 1
Choose File > Import to import a sound file. Locate the sound file and click Open. The sound file will
be saved in the Library.

Step 2
Click in the first frame of "Layer 1" in the Timeline. Choose Window > Panels > Sound from the top
menu.

Step 3
In the pop up window (Sound) choose the sound you imported in the Sound field. Choose Stream in
the Sync field. Close the pop up window.

Step 4
Go to frame 50 in the Timeline. Right click and choose Insert Frame.

Step 5
Choose Control > Test Movie from the top menu to test your Flash movie.
 Flash is a powerful technology to improve any web design and add useful elements to any website.
Being used wisely and appropriately, Flash gives you an opportunity to get utmost of your website
without spending much time and efforts. There can be plenty of Flash elements which can be divided
into several groups.
1. Interactive Flash animation and effects
All these flash menus, buttons, headers and other useful snippets and mini-Flash elements catch the
attentions of your website visitors, make them set their eyes on particular part of your website you
want to highlight. The only problem is to avoid overusage in order not to annoy your visitors. The best
tools are:

 IncrediFlash XTreme (http://www.incrediflash.com) - provides quick help in creating

Flash animations without lots of Flash experience.
 Mix-FX (http://www.mix-fx.com) - simple-to-use Flash tool which allows to create Flash
animations and Flash buttons in a minute.
 Amara Software (http://amarasoftware.com)  - provides affordable animation software
solutions to create a wide variety of Flash effects and web animations.
.

2. Flash picture galleries

Flash gallery is a widely spread technique of web design. It enables user to view a series of images
without opening other web pages. Modern Flash gallery tools give the opportunity to improve ordinary
set of images with sound, text, animation effects and navigation buttons. Most of the tools are
dynamic and use a XML file to load the pictures.

 Origramy Gallery  (http://origramy.com/gallery/index.html) – small-size tool for

publishing and demonstrating images on the website. It has high level of interface customization, XML
support, 2D and 3D solutions.
 dfGallery (http://www.dezinerfolio.com/2007/06/07/dfgallery/) – tool that support
Flickr , Picasa , Fotki, Photobucket and custom Images. It’s easily customizable, support full screen
mode, both RSS and custom images, liquid layout with multiple language support.
.

3. Flash video and audio players

Today Internet is becoming faster and more accessible. Internet users are becoming more and more
sophisticated. More and more people want to see something more than static pictures. That is why
Flash video is becoming even more popular among the users. Flash technology helps you to embed
both video and audio in your website with the help of special Flash media players for the website:

 Flowplayer (http://flowplayer.org/) is an Open Source video player for the Web. It

supports progressive download and true streaming.
 Wimpy streaming media tools (http://www.wimpyplayer.com) - easily present and
control the flow of audio and video.
 Fun SoundPlayer Maker (http://funsoundplayer.com/index.htm)  – fully skinnable
Flash sound player for mp3 or radio streaming.
.

4. Flash charts and graphs

 There have been said plenty of words proving the idea of importance of data visualization. Indeed, the
information from charts and graphs is much easier to understand than the plain columns of figures.
Flash graphs and charts now support dynamic updates, interactivity and lots of other features.

 AmCharts (http://www.amcharts.com/) – Flash charting tool that easily exports data

from Excel, dynamically generate data file with PHP, ASP, .NET or other programming language. Its
Flash-charts also have animation effects and have a possibility to export the chart as an image.
 FlyCharts  (http://flycharts.net/) - scalable & flexible tool that can create compact,
interactive and good-looking charts on the fly. It doesn't need installation, works with any scripting
language, can be used in any browser.
 Origramy  (http://origramy.com)  - Flash graph component for making diagrams and
graphs. It has intuitive multilingual interface, several export formats and JavaScript support.
.

Benefits and drawbacks of Flash web design

Posted on Thursday, February 19, 2009 in Flash, Web Design

Flash is a powerful tool that adds a fillip to website design, if used judiciously.

But before you use it, consider the Whys and Why Nots of Flash web design.

Pros

1. Interactive movies, animation and menus are possible

 
2. Flash animation is easy to create and easy to view
 
3. Flash is independent of browsers and operating systems.  It can be viewed correctly by anyone who has the
Flash plug-in.
 
4. Animated banner advertisements in Flash have higher click-through rates than static gifs.
 
5. Flash is good for web site intros and adds zing to a site
 
6. Video works well in Flash applications.  It doesn’t need a plug-in that’s dependent on a specific operating
system like MediaPlayer or QuickTime.

Cons

1. Search engines crawl text, not Flash intros and bannersIt’s tough to get an all-Flash website to rank
high in search engines. Search engines have problems indexing images, even text rendered as an
image.  HTML pages get indexed in search engines like Google while Flash pages do not.   This is a major
reason not to use Flash.    To overcome this problem you may need tocreate another site in HTML for the
search engine crawlers.  Be sure to include a robots.txt file that bars the Flash pages, so that these pages
 are not seen as duplicate content.  You will also have to face the added effort of creating and maintaining
two sites.
 
2. Ask yourself, what’s the purpose of using Flash? In general, Flash for the sake of using Flash serves no
useful purpose.  Visitors come to websites forinformation, not animation.  Using a flashy introduction to
grab a person’s interest won’t work unless your website provides well-written content that provides the
information he’s looking for. Routine Flash website intros, with images fading in and out and text messages
changing position, don’t capture the reader’s attention unless the messages are focused on his area of
interest or stimulate him to visit the rest of the site.
 
3. Flash intros make the homepage take too long to load.Flash increases the size of the
homepage which takes too long to download.Readers are time-conscious and may flip to another website
by the time your  Flash intro loads. Give them a “Skip intro” option so that they don’t miss the content on
your site.
 
4. Audio files embedded in Flash increase download time.This can turn off visitors who might
otherwise be interested in your site content.
 
5. Music and sound can be annoying to some readers.

They are forced to listen to the audio of your choice, not theirs. This can turn off visitors who may quickly exit
from your site. Do include a Mute button so that visitors can turn down the sound if they want to. 

“But I still want to use Flash.  How can I do it effectively?”

If you must use Flash, you can embed it on an HTML page, say as a Flash Photo Album, or as a catalog
organized into categories, or a slide show.  You need to add text or captions below the
Flash  images.  Remember, it’s the text that’s indexed in search engines, not Flash.  Also ensure that the
images used in Flash are optimized with the lowest compression for quicker loading time.

You could also consider using a Flash header for your web site.  This allows you to write text that is
indexed in search engines, and also use Flash in a smaller area of the web page so that it downloads
faster.  Once the Flash animation downloads, the visitor can page through the rest of the site without
waiting for the Flash part to download each time.

Flash is effective  for visual presentations and would even be expected by visitors on sites relating
to gaming, music, photography, events and movies, for instance.

Whether you decide to use Flash or not is up to you.  The above pointers will help you make a
considered decision that will benefit your business, your visitors and boost your site traffic in the long
run.
Take a look at our wide variety of ready-made website templates, that include Full Flash
templates, CSS Websites with Flash Headers, static website templates, Flash Intros and more!

Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash) is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video,

and interactivity to Web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements and games. More recently, it
has been positioned as a tool for "Rich Internet Applications" ("RIAs").

Flash manipulates vector and raster graphics to provide animation of text, drawings, and still images. It
supports bidirectional streaming of audio and video, and it can capture user input via mouse, keyboard,
microphone, and camera. Flash contains an Object-oriented language called ActionScript.

Flash content may be displayed on various computer systems and devices, using Adobe Flash Player,
which is available free of charge for common Web browsers, some mobile phonesand a few
other electronic devices (using Flash Lite).

History
Originally developed by Macromedia, Flash was introduced in 1996, and is currently developed and
distributed by Adobe Systems. The precursor to the Flash application was SmartSketch, a drawing
application for pen computers running the PenPoint OS developed by Jonathan Gay, who began working
on it in college and extended the idea for Silicon Beach Software and its successors.[1][2] When PenPoint
failed in the marketplace, SmartSketch was ported to Microsoft Windows and Mac OS. With
the Internet becoming more popular, SmartSketch was re-released as FutureSplash, a vector-based Web
animation in competition with Macromedia Shockwave. In 1995, SmartSketch was further modified with
frame-by-frame animation features and re-released as FutureSplash Animator on multiple platforms.
[3]
 The product was offered to Adobe and used by Microsoft in its early work with the Internet (MSN). In
1996, FutureSplash was acquired by Macromedia and released as Flash, contracting "Future" and
"Splash"

Adobe Labs (previously called Macromedia Labs) is a source for news and pre-release versions of
emerging products and technologies from Adobe. Most innovations, such as Flash 10,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 of Rich Internet
Applications (RIAs). To this end, they released Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR), a cross-platformruntime
environment which can be used to build, using Adobe Flash, rich Internet applications that can be
deployed as a desktop application. It surpassed 100 million installations worldwide in February 2009.
[4]
 This is mainly because it is installed silently when Acrobat Reader is installed. Many users are unaware
of its residence on their system.[citation needed]
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; and second, the integration of digital rights management (DRM) capabilities. This way Adobe can
give companies the option to link an advertisement with content and make sure that both are played and
remain unchanged.[5] The current status of these two projects is unclear. [dated info]

Flash Player for smart phones is available to handset manufacturers at the end of 2009. [6]
[edit]Open Screen Project

On May 1, 2008 Adobe announced Open Screen Project, which hopes to provide a consistent application
interface across devices such as personal computers, mobile devices andconsumer electronics.[7] When
the project was announced, several goals were outlined: the abolition of licensing fees for Adobe Flash
Player and Adobe Integrated Runtime, the removal of restrictions on the use of the Shockwave Flash
(SWF) and Flash Video (FLV) file format, the publishing of application programming interfaces for porting
Flash to new devices and the publishing of The Flash Cast protocol and Action Message Format (AMF),
which let Flash applications receive information from remote databases. [7]

As of February 2009, the specifications removing the restrictions on the use of SWF and FLV/F4V specs
have been published.[8] The Flash Cast protocol—now known as the Mobile Content Delivery Protocol—
and AMF protocols have also been made available,[8] with AMF available as an open source
implementation, BlazeDS. Work on the device porting layers is in the early stages. Adobe intends to
remove the licensing fees for Flash Player and Adobe AIR for devices at their release for the Open
Screen Project.

The list of mobile device providers who have joined the project includes Palm, Motorola and Nokia,[9] who,
together with Adobe, have announced a $10 million Open Screen Project fund. [10]

[edit]Format

Flash files are in the SWF format, traditionally called "ShockWave Flash" movies, "Flash movies," or
"Flash games", usually have a .swf file extension, and may be used in the form of a Web-page plug-in,
strictly "played" in a standalone Flash Player, or incorporated into a self-executing Projector movie (with
the .exe extension in Microsoft Windows). Flash Videofiles[spec 1] 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 externalcodecs added.

The use of vector graphics combined with program code allows Flash files to be smaller — and thus for
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
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.

Flash Player is a browser plugin, and cannot run within a usual e-mail client, such as Outlook. Instead, a
link must open a browser window. A Gmail labs feature allows playback of YouTube videos linked in
emails.
[edit]Flash Video
Main article:  Flash Video

Until the advent of HTML5, displaying video on a web page required browser plugins, which are uniquely
implemented by third party vendors. Virtually all browser plugins for video are freeand cross-platform,
including Adobe's offering of Flash Video, which was first introduced with Flash version 6. Flash Video
has been a popular choice for websites due to the largeinstalled user base and programmability of Flash.
In 2010, Apple has publicly criticized Adobe's implementation of Flash Video playback for not taking
advantage of hardware acceleration, as well as criticizing Flash technology in general which has been
cited as reason for not implementing Apple's mobile devices. Soon after Apple's criticism, Adobe demoed
and released a beta version of Flash 10.1, which takes advantage of hardware acceleration even on a
Mac.
[edit]Flash Audio

Flash Audio is most commonly encoded in MP3 or AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) however it does also
support ADPCM, Nellymoser (Nellymoser Asao Codec) and Speex audio codecs. Flash allows sample
rates of 11, 22 and 44.1 kHz. It does not support 48 kHz audio sample rate which is the standard Tv, DVD
sample rate.

On August 20, 2007, Adobe announced on its blog that with Update 3 of Flash Player 9, Flash Video will
also support some parts of the MPEG-4 international standards.[11] Specifically, Flash Player will have
support for video compressed in H.264 (MPEG-4 Part 10), audio compressed using AAC (MPEG-4 Part
3), the F4V, MP4 (MPEG-4 Part 14), M4V, M4A, 3GP andMOV multimedia container
formats, 3GPP Timed Text specification (MPEG-4 Part 17) which is a standardized subtitle format and
partial parsing support for the 'ilst' atom which is theID3 equivalent iTunes uses to
store metadata. MPEG-4 Part 2 and H.263 will not be supported in F4V file format. Adobe also
announced that they will be gradually moving away from the FLV format to the standard ISO base media
file format (MPEG-4 Part 12) owing to functional limits with the FLV structure when streaming H.264. The
final release of the Flash Player supporting some parts of MPEG-4 standards had become available in
Fall 2007.[12]

Adobe Flash Player 10.1 does not support acoustic echo cancellation, unlike the VoIP offerings of Skype
and Google Voice. This makes Flash less suitable for group calling or meetings, as use of headphones
for all participants is essential, or at least highly advised.

[edit]Authoring tools
[edit]Adobe Flash Professional
It has been suggested that FutureSplash Animator be merged into this article or
section. (Discuss)

Adobe Flash Professional

Adobe Flash CS5 Professional (11.0.2.489)

Developer(s) Adobe Systems (formerly byMacromedia)

Written in C++

Operating system Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X

Type Multimedia
 License Proprietary commercial software

Website adobe.com/products/flash/flashpro/

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.
[edit]History

Release Year Description

FutureSplash 199
initial version of Flash with basic editing tools and a timeline
Animator 6

Macromedia 199
a Macromedia re-branded version of the FutureSplash Animator
Flash 1 6

Macromedia 199
Released with Flash Player 2, new features included: the object library
Flash 2 7

Macromedia 199 Released with Flash Player 3, new features included: the movieclip
Flash 3 8 element, JavaScript plug-in integration, transparency and an external stand alone player

Macromedia 199 Released with Flash Player 4, new features included: internal variables, an input field,
Flash 4 9 advanced ActionScript, and streaming MP3

Released with Flash Player 5, new features included: ActionScript 1.0 (based on
Macromedia 200
ECMAScript, making it very similar to JavaScript in syntax), XML support, Smartclips (the
Flash 5 0
precursor to components in Flash), HTML text formatting added for dynamic text

Macromedia 200 Released with Flash Player 6, new features included: a video codec (Sorenson
Flash MX(6) 2 Spark),Unicode, v1 UI Components, compression, ActionScript vector drawing API
 Released with Flash Player 7, new features included: Actionscript 2.0 (which enabled
anobject-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. Macromedia Flash
Macromedia MX Professional 2004 included all Flash MX 2004 features, plus: Screens (forms for non-
200
Flash MX linear state-based development and slides for organizing content in a linear slide format
3
2004(7) likePowerPoint), 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.

Macromedia Flash Basic 8, 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. Macromedia Flash Professional 8 added features focused
Macromedia 200 on expressiveness, quality, video, and mobile authoring. New features included Filters and
Flash 8 5 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.

Flash CS3 is the first version of Flash released under the Adobe name. CS3 features full
Adobe Flash support for ActionScript 3.0, allows entire applications to be converted into ActionScript,
200
CS3(9) adds better integration with other Adobe products such as Adobe Photoshop, and also
7
Professional provides better Vector drawing behavior, becoming more like Adobe Illustrator and Adobe
Fireworks.

Adobe Flash Contains inverse kinematics (bones), basic 3D object manipulation, object-based animation,

200
CS4(10) a text engine, and further expansions to ActionScript 3.0. CS4 allows the developer to
8
Professional create animations with many features absent in previous versions.

Adobe Flash 201 Flash CS5 was released on April 12, 2010 and launched for trialling and normal buying on
Professional 0 April 30, 2010. Flash CS5 Professional includes support for publishing iPhoneapplications.
[13]
CS5(11)  However, on April 8, 2010 Apple changed the terms of its Developer License to
effectively ban the use of the Flash-to-iPhone compiler [14] and on April 20, 2010 Adobe
announced that they will be making no additional investments in targeting the iPhone and
iPad in Flash CS5.[15]
 Other features of Flash CS5 are a new text engine (TLF), further improvement to inverse
kinematics, and the Code Snippets panel. [16]

[edit]Third-party tools
Open Source projects like Ajax Animator and the (now defunct) UIRA aim to create a flash development
environment, complete with a graphical user environment. Alternatively, programs such
as swfmill, SWFTools, and MTASC provide tools to create SWF files, but do so by compiling text,
actionscript or XML files into Flash animations. It is also possible to create SWF files programmatically
using the Ming library, which has interfaces for C, PHP, C++, Perl, Python, and Ruby. haXe is an open
source, high-level object-oriented programming language geared towards web-content creation that can
compile Flash files.

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 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 a traditional animation tool, based on Flash.

In addition, several programs create .swf-compliant files as output from their programs. Among the most
famous of these are Screencast tools, which leverage the ability to do lossless compression and playback
of captured screen content in order to produce demos, tutorials, or software simulations of programs.
These programs are typically designed for use by non-programmers, and create Flash content quickly
and easily, but cannot actually edit the underlying Flash code (i.e. the tweening and transforms,
etc.) Screencam is perhaps the oldest screencasting authoring tool to adopt Flash as the preferred output
format, having been developed since the mid-90s. The fact that screencasting programs have adopted
Flash as the preferred output is testament to Flash's presence as a ubiquitous cross-platform animation
file format.

Other tools are focused on creating specific types of Flash content. Anime Studio is a 2D animation
software package specialized for character animation which creates SWF files.Express Animator is
similarly aimed specifically at animators. Question Writer publishes its quizzes to Flash file format.

Users who are not programmers or web designers will also find on-line tools that allow them to build full
Flash-based web sites. One of the oldest services available (1998) isFlashToGo. Such companies
provide a wide variety of pre-built models (templates) associated to a Content Management System that
empowers users to easily build, edit and publish their web sites. Other sites, that allows for greater
customization and design flexibility are Wix.com and CirclePad.

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.

In February 2003, Macromedia purchased Presedia, which had developed a Flash authoring tool that
automatically converted PowerPoint files into Flash. Macromedia subsequently released the new product
as Breeze, which included many new enhancements. In addition, (as of version
2) Apple's Keynote presentation software also allows users to create interactive presentations and export
to SWF.

[edit]Installed user base

Flash as a format has become widespread on the desktop market; one estimate is that 95% of PCs have
it,[17] while Adobe claims that 98 percent of U.S. Web users and 99.3 percent of all Internet desktop users
have installed the Flash Player,[18][19] with 92 to 95% (depending on region) having the latest version.
[20]
 Numbers vary depending on the detection scheme and research demographics.

The Adobe Flash Player exists for a variety of systems and devices: Windows, Mac OS
9/X, Linux, Solaris, HP-UX, Pocket PC/Windows CE, OS/2, QNX, Android, Symbian, Palm OS,BeOS,
and IRIX, although the performance is typically best on Windows (see Performance). For compatibility
with devices (embedded systems), see Macromedia Flash Lite.

Among mobile devices, Flash has less penetration because Apple does not bundle or allow third-party
runtimes on its iPhone, which accounts for more than 60% of global smartphone web traffic, or the iPod
touch, which makes up more than 95% of "mobile Internet device" traffic. This hurts Adobe's ability to
market Flash as a ubiquitous mobile platform. However, Flash support has been announced for
competing mobile platforms, including the next version of Android.[21]

[edit]64-bit support
On September 27, 2010, Adobe Labs released the Adobe Flash "Square" preview2 which continues
Adobe's efforts in building a 64-bit flash plugin for 64-bit web browsers. The "Square" preview is available
for Windows, Mac and Linux.[22] This new version can be downloaded at the Adobe lab site. [23]

The key new capabilities in the Flash Player "Square" preview are:

 64-bit support — Native support for 64-bit operating systems and 64-bit web browsers on Linux,
Mac OS, and Windows. (Hulu and Amazon which depends on RTMPE aren't currently functioning
 because there are some 64-bit libs that need to be integrated into the branch"Adobe Forums: Flash
Player "Square": 64-bit".)
 Internet Explorer 9 hardware accelerated rendering support — Enhanced support for Internet
Explorer 9 Beta. It takes advantage of hardware accelerated graphics in Internet Explorer 9 Beta,
utilizing hardware rendering surfaces to improve graphics performance and enable seamless
composition.

The first experimental release of 64-bit builds of Adobe Flash Player was for the Linux platform, [24] on
November 11, 2008.[25]

The project was closed temporarily on June 15, 2010, [26] while Adobe was preparing for the preview
release on September 15, 2010.

The official 32-bit player is still distributed in 64-bit Linux distributions e.g. Ubuntu, openSUSE, of which
some users have reported problems with the 32-bit player on some websites. [27][28][29] Affected users can
install the 64-bit player manually[30] or through a special repository.[31]

Adobe expects to provide 64-bit versions of its Flash Player for Windows, Macintosh and Linux with an
upcoming major release of Adobe Flash Player.[32][33]

[edit]Flash blocking in web browsers

Some web browsers default to not play Flash content before the user clicks on it, e.g. Konqueror, K-
Meleon. Equivalent "Flash blocker" extensions also exist for many popular browsers: Firefox
has NoScript and Flashblock, and Opera has an extension also called Flashblock. Using Opera Turbo
requires user clicks to play Flash content. Internet Explorer has Foxie, which contains a number of
features, one of them also named Flashblock. WebKit-based browsers under Mac OS X, such as Apple's
Safari, have ClickToFlash.[34]

[edit]Scripting language
Further information: ActionScript

[edit]Related file formats and extensions

Extensio
Explanation
n

.swf files are completed, compiled and published files that cannot be edited with Adobe Flash.
.swf However, many '.swf decompilers' do exist. [35] Attempting to import .swf files using Flash allows it to
retrieve some assets from the .swf, but not all. [36]
 FXG is an unified xml file format being developed by Adobe for Flex, Flash, Photoshop and other
.FXG
applications.

.fla files contain source material for the Flash application. Flash authoring software can edit FLA files
and compile them into .swf files. The Flash source file format is currently a binary file format based on
.fla
the Microsoft Compound File Format. In Flash Pro CS5, the fla file format is a zip container of an XML-
based project structure.

.xfl files are XML-based project files that are equivalent to the binary .fla format. Flash authoring
software uses XFL as an exchange format in Flash CS4. It imports XFL files that are exported from
.xfl
InDesign and AfterEffects. In Flash Pro CS5, the xfl file is a key file which opens the "uncompressed FLA"
file, which is a hierarchy of folders containing XML and binary files.

.as files contain ActionScript source code in simple source files. FLA files can also contain Actionscript
.as code directly, but separate external .as files often emerge for structural reasons, or to expose the code
to versioning applications.

.mxml files are used in conjunction with ActionScript files (and .css files), and offer a markup-language-
style syntax (like HTML) for designing the GUI in Flex. Each MXML file creates a new class that extends
.mxml
the class of the root tag, and adds the nested tags as children (if they are descendants of UIComponent)
or members of the class.

.swd files are temporary debugging files used during Flash development. Once finished developing a
.swd
Flash project these files are not needed and can be removed.

.asc files contain Server-Side ActionScript, which is used to develop efficient and flexible client-server
.asc
Macromedia Flash Communication Server MX applications.

.abc files contain actionscript bytecode used by the Actionscript Virtual Machine AVM (Flash 8 and
.abc
prior), and AVM2 (Flash 9 or later).

.flv files are Flash video files, as created by Adobe Flash, ffmpeg, Sorenson Squeeze, or On2 Flix. The
.flv
audio and video data within FLV files are encoded in the same way as they are within SWF files.

.f4v .f4v files are similar to MP4 files and can be played back by Flash Player 9 Update 3 and above. F4V file
format is second container format for Flash video and it differs from FLV file format. It is based on
 the ISO base media file format.[37][38]

.f4p .f4p files are F4V files with digital rights management.[38]

.f4a .f4a files are F4V files that contain only audio streams. [38]

.f4b .f4b files are F4V audio book files.[38]

.swc files are used for distributing components; they contain a compiled clip, the component's
.swc
ActionScript class file, and other files that describe the component.

.jsfl files are used to add functionality in the Flash Authoring environment; they contain JavaScript code
.jsfl
and access the Flash JavaScript API.

.swt .swt files are 'templatized' forms of .swf files, used by Macromedia Generator

.flp files are XML files used to reference all the document files contained in a Flash Project. Flash
.flp 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 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
.aso 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.

.sol files are created by Adobe Flash Player to hold Local Shared Objects (data stored on the system
.sol
running the Flash player).

[edit]Competition
[edit]Microsoft Silverlight
In recent years, Microsoft Silverlight has emerged as a strong competitor to Flash. While not yet as
prevalent on web sites as Flash, Silverlight has been used to provide video streaming for many high
profile events, including the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing,[39] the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver,
[40]
 and the 2008 conventions for both major political parties in the United States. [41] Silverlight is also used
by Netflix for its instant video streaming service.[42]

[edit]Java

Java applets are used both to create interactive visualisations and to present video, three dimensional
objects and other media. Java applets are more appropriate for complex visualizations that require
significant programming effort in high level language or communications between applet and originating
server. Sun's new Java FX is considered as another competitor for Rich Internet Applications.

[edit]Open standard alternatives

The W3C's SVG and SMIL standards are seen as the closest competitors of Flash. [43][44] Adobe formerly
developed and distributed the 'Adobe SVG Viewer' client plug-in for MS Internet Explorer, but
discontinued support and distribution on January 1, 2009. [45] It has been noted by industry commentators
that this was probably no coincidence at a time when Adobe moved from competing with Macromedia's
Flash to owning the technology itself.[46] Meanwhile, Opera has supported SVG since version 8
and Safari has since version 3,[47] and Mozilla Firefox's built-in support for SVG continues to grow.[48][49]

UIRA was a free software project that intended to become a complete replacement for Adobe Flash. The
project collapsed in mid 2007, though people are now discussing reviving or continuing it, [50] and a few
other projects like Ajax Animator still exist.

HTML 5 is gaining ground as a competitor to Flash: the canvas element enables animation, and scripting
can be synchronized with audio and video element timeupdate events. In one example of this, Scribd, a
50 million user a month document sharing website, announced in May 2010 that after three years of
investment in Flash, it is changing from that platform to the HTML5 standard. [51]

[edit]Third-party implementation
[edit]Specifications

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. In February 1999, the company introducedMorphInk 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.
Macromedia made the Flash Files specifications for versions 6 and later available only under a non-
disclosure agreement, but they are widely available from various sites.

In April 2006, the 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 covered all the new features offered in
Flash v8 including new ActionScript commands, expressive filter controls, and so on. The file format
specification document is offered only 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. The
Flash 9 specification was made available under similar restrictions. [52]

In June 2009, Adobe launched the Open Screen Project (Adobe link), which made the SWF specification
available without restrictions. Previously, developers couldn't use the specification for making SWF-
compatible players, but only for making SWF-exporting authoring software. The specification still omits
information on codecs such as Sorenson Spark, however.[53]
[edit]Playback

Since Flash files do not depend on an open standard such as SVG, this reduces the incentive for non-
commercial software to support the format, although there are several third party tools which use and
generate the SWF file format. Flash Player cannot ship as part of a pure open source, or completely free
operating system, as its distribution is bound to theMacromedia Licensing Program and subject to
approval.

There is, as of late 2008, no complete free software replacement which offers all the functionality of the
latest version of Adobe Flash Player.

Gnash is an active project that aims to create a free player and browser plugin for the Adobe Flash file
format and so provide a free alternative to the Adobe Flash Player under the GNU General Public
License. Despite potential patent worries because of the proprietary nature of the files involved, [54] Gnash
supports most SWF v7 features and some SWF v8 and v9. [55][56] Gnash runs on Windows, Linux and other
operating systems on 32-bit, 64-bit and other architectures.

Swfdec is another open-source flash player available for Linux, FreeBSD and OpenBSD. See also
SWFOpener.

Lightspark is a new implementation aiming to create a more modern and fast player. Besides hardware-
accelerated rendering, it exploits multithreading and JIT compilation. It supports only the new ActionScript
3 VM introduced in Flash 9.
Scaleform GFx is a commercial alternative Flash player that features full hardware acceleration using
the GPU and has high conformance with both Flash 10 ActionScript 3[57] and Flash 8 AS2. Scaleform GFx
is licensed as a game middleware solution and used by many PC and console 3D games for user
interfaces, HUDs, mini games, and video playback.

rtmpdump is an open source software implementation of an RTMP client, Flash's own streaming protocol.
rtmpdump was removed from Sourceforge on request by Adobe.[58]

flvstreamer is an open source software implementation of an RTMP client, Flash's own streaming
protocol. It is a fork of rtmpdump which has all the cryptographic support (i.e. RTMPE and SWF
verification) removed from the code.

Smokescreen allows playback of flash files using javascript in the webpage.

[edit]Criticism

[edit]Availability

Flash is blocked in countries that are under U.S sanctions (such as Syria & Sudan). Users in these
countries are blocked (by Adobe) from downloading Flash plug-ins for both Internet Explorer and Firefox
browsers.

[edit]Security

Flash's security record[59] has caused several security experts to recommend to not install Flash or to
block it.[60] The US-CERT recommends to block Flash using NoScript.[61] Charlie Miller recommended "not
to install Flash"[62] at the computer security conference CanSecWest. As of May 17, 2010, The Flash
Player has 77 CVE entries,[63] 34 of which have been ranked with a high severity (leading to arbitrary code
execution), and 40 ranked medium. In February 2010, Adobe officially apologized [64] for not fixing a known
vulnerability for over 1 year. In June 2010 Adobe announced a "critical vulnerability" in recent versions,
saying there are reports that this vulnerability is being actively exploited in the wild against both Adobe
Flash Player, and Adobe Reader and Acrobat.[65][66]

Symantec's Internet Security Threat Report[67] states that a remote code execution in Adobe Reader and
Flash Player[68] was the second most attacked vulnerability in 2009. The same report also recommends to
employ browser add-ons wherever possible to disable Adobe Flash Player when visiting untrusted
sites. McAfee predicts that Adobe software, especially Reader and Flash, will be the primary target for
attacks in 2010.[69] Adobe applications had already become the most popular client-software targets for
attackers during the last quarter of 2009.[70]
[edit]Local Shared Objects (“Flash cookies”)
Main article:  Local Shared Object
Like the HTTP cookie, a flash cookie (also known as a “Local Shared Object”) can be used to save
application data. Flash cookies are not shared across domains. An August 2009 study by the Social
Science Research Network found that 50% of websites using Flash were also employing flash cookies,
yet privacy policies rarely disclosed them, and user controls for privacy preferences were lacking. [71] Most
browsers' cache and history suppress or delete functions do not affect Flash Player's writing Local Shared
Objects to its own cache, and the user community is much less aware of the existence and function of
Flash cookies than HTTP cookies.[72] Thus, users having deleted HTTP cookies and purged browser
history files and caches may believe that they have purged all tracking data from their computers when in
fact Flash browsing history remains. Adobe's own Flash Website Storage Settings panel, a submenu of
Adobe's Flash Settings Manager web application, and other editors and toolkits can manage settings for
and delete Flash Local Shared Objects.[73]

[edit]Performance

 Any Flash player has to be able to animate on top of video renderings, which makes hardware
accelerated video rendering at least not as straightforward as with a purpose builtmultimedia player.
[74]
 Therefore, even when only displaying video, Flash players are more resource intensive than
dedicated video player software.

 Comparisons have shown Adobe Flash Player to perform better on Windows than Mac

OSX and Linux with the same hardware.[75][76]
[edit]Accessibility

Using Flash tends to break conventions associated with normal HTML pages. Selecting text, scrolling,
[77]
 form control and right-clicking act differently than with a regular HTML webpage. Many such interface
unexpectancies are fixable by the designer. Usability expert Jakob Nielsen published an Alertbox in 2000
entitled, Flash: 99% Bad which listed issues like this.[78]Some problems have been improved upon since
Nielsen's complaints:

 Text size can be controlled using full page zoom, found in many modern browsers.
 It has been possible for authors to include alternative text in Flash since Flash Player 6.
This accessibility feature is compatible only with certain screen readers and only under Windows.[79]
[edit]Open web versus proprietary plugins

Some websites rely on Flash so heavily that they are totally unusable without this plugin

The proprietary nature of Flash has been a concern to advocates of open standards and free software. Its
widespread use has, according to such observers, harmed the otherwise open nature of the World Wide
Web.[80] A response may be seen in Adobe's Open Screen Project: Adobe's restrictions on the use of the
SWF/FLV specifications have been lifted.

Representing open standards, inventor of CSS and co-author of HTML5, Håkon Wium Lie explained in

a Google tech talk entitled "the <video> element" the proposal of Theora as the format for HTML5 video:
[81]

I believe very strongly, that we need to agree on some kind of baseline video format if [the video element]
is going to succeed. Flash is today the baseline format on the web. The problem with Flash is that it's not
an open standard.

Presenting the free software movement, Richard Stallman stated in a speech in October 2004 that:[82]

The use of Flash in websites is a major problem for our community.

Stallman's argument then was that no free players were comparatively good enough. As of February
2010, Gnash and Swfdec have seen very limited success in competing with Adobe's player. Many
important and popular websites require users to have a Flash player, sometimes with no fallback for non-
Flash web users. Therefore, the lack of a good free Flash player is arguably an obstacle to enjoying the
web with free software, and the aforementioned ubiquity of Flash makes the problem very evident for
anyone who tries. The continual high ranking of Gnash on the Free Software Foundation's list of high
priority projects[83] might indicate the severity of the problem, as judged by the free software community.

[edit]Problems with 64-bit Linux

Adobe's 64-bit Flash player is currently available as an preview2 release. Some distributions ship or
package the 32-bit version, which may be problematic. See 64-bit support.
[edit]See also
Adobe Flash

 SWF file format, the files generated by the Flash application and played by Flash Player.
 ActionScript
 ActionScript code protection
 Adobe Flash Player, the runtime that executes and plays back Flash movies.
 Adobe Flash Lite, a lightweight version of Flash Player for devices that lack the resources to run
regular Flash movies such as mobile phones, some laptop computers and other portable devices.
 Flash Video
 Saffron Type System, the anti-aliased text-rendering engine used in version 8 onwards.
 Local Shared Object
 SWFObject, a JavaScript library used to embed Flash content into webpages.
 Flash CMS, content management for Flash content.
Other

 Gnash
 HTML5 video
 Microsoft Silverlight
 JavaFX
 OpenLaszlo
 Synfig